Kissing a Fool (1998)

Directed by Doug Ellin. Starring Jason Lee, Mili Avital, David Schwimmer, Bonnie Hunt, Vanessa Angel, Judy Greer, Kari Wuhrer, Bitty Schram, Frank Medrano. [R]

Novelist Max (Lee) sets up womanizing sportswriter friend Jay (Schwimmer) with his editor Sam (Avital) and, against all odds, they actually hit it off. Jay, apparently as insecure as he is loutish, then feels the need to test her loyalty by asking Max to make a move on her. Utterly predictable romantic comedy wastes Lee’s sly but neurotic sarcasm and Avital’s luminosity on a tiresome, sub-sitcom-level script written by director Ellin and James Frey (yes, that James Frey) where supposedly bright and appealing characters keep doing stupid things for the sake of the contrived plot—by contrast, Schwimmer’s TV day job positively sparkled. Plus, all of this is actually a flashback narrated by Hunt as a chain-smoking wedding guest (who’s wedding? Oh, please…) in one of the most obnoxious framing devices ever put to celluloid. Scenes between Avital and Lee are usually passable, occasionally sweet, but the rest should have been shorn, rewritten, or stabbed to death with that toothpick always resting between Schwimmer’s lips.

22/100