Kimberly Review

• 24th Jul 2011

Why this 1999 film gets a release now is a mystery. This is a rather tired TV movie style romcom about an English girl and daughter of a former Olympic rower who arrives at a local rowing club and immediately attracts the attention of four male friends and members of a rowing team: one is a sex addict, another is a married college professor, one is good looking but so wrapped up in his work he doesn’t notice women and the other a self confessed tool. When she turns up and turns the heads of the three men they persuade her to coach them for the upcoming trials for the local rowing championships. Naturally in a short while they all ask her out on a date (even though they had agreed they wouldn’t) and there friendship with her in turn soon morphs into sexual encounters. Then as bad fortune would have it she falls pregnant and when she tells them the friends all react differently. They see her through her pregnancy and are all there for the birth; each one of them believing they are the father – but of course it can only be one.

This chick flick/romcom is given all the polish of a cheap Hollywood film, but ultimately it raises some curious questions such as what were the writers and makers thinking when they seem to be condoning her promiscuous behaviour and turning this would be polished chick flick into a decidedly un-Hollywood boy-girl relationship scenario? Another way of looking at it is that it breaks down the usual social norms and taboos. Think of it this way? Were this film about four women who are both attracted to the same guy: if he were to sleep with the four women would his behaviour be considered slutty? Of course not (think of Truffaut’s The Man Who Loved Women, 1977). But this is partly where the films problem lies. It is in every sense of the word a chick flick and it is too much of a stretch for the average audience not to cast judgement or just go with it.

The only big name in the film is Molly Ringwald, she of Pretty in Pink (1986) fame and offers very little other than being the wife of the college professor. The film has very few moments that would raise a laugh and is all round pretty dreadful; it is very hard to gauge who this film is trying to please. Made in 1999 and given a very limited release in the US (released on video there as Daddy Who?) it’s really one that she should have been left in the nineties.

Chris Hick