The One with Mr. Crankypants

Disclaimer: I enjoy love stories in general. Off the top of my head, I can think of cheesy films I'm fond of watching over and over again ("A Walk To Remember", "Serendipity", "My Bestfriend's Wedding"). Six of my seven favorite films ever are somewhat romantic in one way or another. I've read quite a few of Nicholas Sparks' books and find him an okay writer. So you can’t say I'm a heartless turd with no feelings whatsoever.

I was in the mood for a sappy love story to begin the year, so I got a copy of "If Only", starring the oh-so-fine Jennifer Love Hewitt and some unknown British actor. In a nutshell, it's a story of a guy whose girlfriend dies, so he's all "booo-hooo-why-didn't-I-show-her-how-much-I-love-her". When he wakes up the next day, he finds his girlfriend alive. Everything unfolds the same way it did the previous day, giving him a chance to save his girlfriend from dying. A friend of mine highly recommended watching it back in July, but it looked like a B-movie to me so I passed up on watching then. I chanced upon a thread over at PinoyExchange discussing the movie and saw the great reception it received from them PExers, so I expected something that will at least touch one nerve in my body (JLH in her underwear… it couldn’t be that bad, eh?) :p

Oh. My. Gawd. What a horrible piece of horse dung. Where do I even begin ripping this crap into pieces? It isn’t even remotely close to being good (easily one of the worst movies I’ve seen in ages). I won’t even bother giving out spoiler warnings to those who haven’t seen it yet; it’s better that you get spoiled rather than having the unfortunate experience of watching this steaming pile of horse shit.

1. The scene where JLH went to her boyfriend’s meeting because she thought he forgot his notes (turns out, she had the wrong notes with her). She talked and talked and talked endlessly - which was supposed to be cute and funny, only it wasn’t. I wanted to bludgeon her to death, if only to stop the stupidity of the situation. Bleh.
2. Cheesy dialogue, clichéd script, flawed plot. Imagine, they managed to take a train ride to the country, go mountain climbing, made love in an abandoned shack (you’d think it wasn’t abandoned with the candles, matchsticks, chopped firewood, and clean rug lying around), shared sob-stories in a bar, rode the London Eye (FYI, a full cycle on the London Eye takes at least an hour)… all in one afternoon! Makes me wonder, perhaps I should smash my watch as well so my day lasts as long as it did with these two twerps?
3. The sequence where JLH sings with a full orchestra to back her up. Her boyfriend gave the music notes (notes only for a guitar, I might add) to the conductor minutes before the show began, and voila! The whole orchestra already knew how to play the piece instantly! Nevermind that it takes a musician several days, even weeks to master a piece, moreso a whole orchestra!. Nooooooooo, the strings and the percussions and all others knew exactly when to come in. Heck, they even throw a full choir in there. Lo and behold! They still managed to pull everything off flawlessly! No wonder the dingbat who wrote this shit doesn't have any other writing credit to her name.

I know I'm nitpicking, but I just couldn't see what others saw in this disaster of a movie. Frankly, I’m surprised so many people loved it. Some called its story “fresh” (Hello? "Groundhog Day"? "Sliding Doors"?), some said they were touched by it (I find the "Dragon Katol" commercials more touching), while others have said it changed their lives (Get a life! Your current one SUCKS LIKE HELL). It did succeed in making me cry (with how dreadful it was).

Horrible. Just horrible.