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Best Laid PlansRating:
Release Date: 15 April, 2003 Retail Price: $9.98 OUR Price: $8.99 You SAVE: $0.99! Cast: Complete Cast (8 total) |
Best Laid Plans Reviews
Contrived, convoluted, but somewhat watchable
This mostly forgotten thriller starring Reese Witherspoon (Lissa) and Alessandro Nivola (Nick) suffers from a mightily contrived plot and a "Huh?--What happened?" ending. Nick is a guy who works at the local recycling plant (that's a new workplace for celluloid protagonists) who is about to inherit some big bucks from his father who has just kicked the bucket.
Meanwhile some of his coworkers are scheming up a plot to...well, no spoilers here. Let's just say that the viewer does not find out about this plot until the end, and then it seems a little...well, lame.
Along comes Lissa looking mighty fine and they fall in love, although I must say the chemistry certainly didn't spark up the screen. Now comes complication number one: the old man blew almost all his money and what he didn't blow the IRS is grabbing. Because of this Nick gets tempted into driving a get-away car for a drug rip off... Things go awry and Nick ends up in deep doo-doo, and in desperation gets Lissa to help him rip off an old school chum...which... Well, what these people do in desperation is a little on the unbelievable side.
I'm sorry that's all vague, but at least it's enough information to let you know if you actually saw this movie or not. Now, if you like probability-challenged, convoluted plots with loose ends and a lot of unlikely twists and turns, you might find this movie interesting. And if you like Reese, and you should, you might also find a reason for sticking around until the end. I know I did. She does a good job and looks good doing it.
Bottom line: although the best laid plans of mice and men often go awry, it can also be said that the most meticulously contrived plots sometimes turn out about as convincing as pseudoscience. Incidentally the title is a paraphrase of the 18th century Scottish poet Robert Burns's line: "The best-laid schemes o' mice an' men/Gang aft a-gley."
No harm, no foul
At first glance this would appear to be a VERY serious movie. The opening 1/2 hour or so reminded me of the movie BODY SHOTS, which is a rather disturbing film. What is most intriguing about this story is that it is a complete farce and the movie seems to change colors like some sort of a chameleon. What you end up with is something totally different than what you think you're getting in the beginning.
Reese Witherspoon stars once again as a sort-of young girl lost type persona. She seems to be somewhat typecast for this type of role as in many ways her character is not so different from the ones she portrayed in TWILIGHT and FREEWAY. While the present film is not quite as off-the-wall as FREEWAY, it is still pretty far out in left-field.
If you're a fan of Reese Witherspoon or films that are on the fringes of THE TWILIGHT ZONE, this one might be for you. While there are many obvious clues during the film as to what's going on, I did not take them seriously enough to figure this plotline out before the final revelation. Can you?
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