Released: June 1st, 2007
Starring: Jay Baruchel, Alexis Bledel, Schuyler Fisk, DJ Qualls, A.J. Cook, Sherri Appleby , Katie Sagal
Writer/Director: Reed Fish/Zackary Adler
Description: Reed Fish's life turns into chaos when a high school crush returns to Mud Meadows on the eve of his marriage to the small town's sweetheart.
[Review may contain spoilers. Please watch movie before reading, unless you don't care. Most of these films have already been released for a while, so they should be readily available.]
***
Happy Valentine's Day, everyone! This is usually a holiday I try to forget since I don't have anyone to share it with, but as the day grew closer, I realized that I needed to find a romantic movie to watch for this project. As I scrolled through my queue, I realized that there were plenty of choices but only one that both intrigued me and I hadn't seen before. The coming-of-age story, "I'm Reed Fish".
The movie first stood out because Alexis Bledel was one of my high school fantasy women, so I stopped on the movie as soon as I saw the cover. But I was pleased to find quite a few actors and actress that I enjoyed in the film. This only heighten my excitement prior to viewing, but that all dissipated somewhere between the quarter-mark and the half-way point of the movie.
This is the moment where they reveled that it was a film within a film, and also where it lost me. It was an interesting way to tell the story, but also left feeling completely uninterested the story of the "film". As I sat through the rest of what we already knew was not the actual story, I kept hoping that it would pay off in the end. But, alas, it didn't.
The ending of the "film" didn't help my opinion of the film. It actually an awful movie that the character Reed Fish (Baruchel) made. If only because it didn't really end, and it felt like the middle. After the "credits" roll, we are lead to believe that Reed ends up with Jill even though there is no explanation of how they reconciled or that they are even together. You don't know about them until the final few frames of the movie. It appeared that the writer Reed Fish was too interested in delivering the twist ending, right down to "real" Jill (Appleby) looking like "fake" Kate (Bledel).
Despite the problem with the storytelling and ending(s?), the movie was well acted. Baruchel showed a knack of playing a leading man in a romantic comedy, and made Fish's wave of emotions over the last half of the film believable. Fisk is hit or miss as the wedge that comes between the town's fairytale relationship, but she does light up the screen in her two singing showcases. The movie would have been lost without the supporting performances by Katie Sagal and DJ Qualls to help create the environment of a quirky small town.
"I'm Reed Fish" has some major plot holes in it that get absolutely no explanation at all. In the "fake" movie, we are to believe that Fish has completely severed ties with both Kate and Jill, but after the movie premieres everyone seems cool. I don't know if the part of the film that explains this change of attitude was left on the cutting room floor, or if it was completely omitted in the script. Whether it was the writer, producer, or editor who made this mistake, all that matters is there a huge gap in the story that was never fulfilled for me. If Fish making a movie healed everything, then that's really narcissistic and I don't buy it.
Rating: 4.5/10 -- The half-point is because despite it problems, this film is better than "Killers". There is nothing that makes me dislike a movie more than incomplete writing. Hell, I'd take a throwaway line that explains a plot hole, but to have a couple look like there's no hope and then have them lay on a roof holding hands with no explanation of how they reconciled, is inexcusable. Maybe I missed it, but I don't think so.
