Last Article - Whatever-Dude - Next Article Enduring the Horror of Freddie Prinze, Jr. I knew that when I decided to open this website, that there would be some difficult things I would have to endure for the sake of comedy. As I was walking through Blockbuster Video today, I decided that I might was well get it over with and do possibly the hardest thing I’ll ever have to do in regards to writing for Whatever-Dude.com. You see, I like to make fun of Freddie Prinze Jr. as much as the next guy. Call it male bravado; call it easy comedy; just don’t call me late for dinner. Hehe… ahem. You see, I’ve never actually seen a Freddie Prinze Jr. movie. All I’ve seen are the commercials for them on television… and the easy joke to make is that he pretty much makes the same movie over and over again, only with a different young actress as the leading lady each time.
Sure, I’ve seen “I Know What You Did Last Summer” and it’s subsequent unnecessary sequel that was made solely because the original did decent box office business. However, I wouldn’t call those Freddie Prinze Jr. vehicles, as any young male knows that the true star of those movies were the breasts of Jennifer Love Hewitt. On a related note, Jennifer Love Hewitt’s made for television Audrey Hepburn movie, should be coming out soon, causing many men over the age of forty to exclaim, “I don’t remember Hepburn having such nice cans.”. Katherine Hepburn (head shaking violently): “Dave.. you’re myy knniiight iiiin shiiniing armooor.” Did I just use “On Golden Pond” humor? What’s wrong with me? Old Ben Kenobi: “That’s your uncle talking…” Ahh… Star Wars humor. Now that’s more Gen-X of me! Like I was saying before I got distracted by the thought of Jennifer Love Hewitt’s breasts… and what warm blooded heterosexual male could blame me; I was in the video store when I decided to suck it up and do the most painful thing I could imagine for the sake of comedy… start a series of Freddie Prinze Jr. movie reviews. The only question was which movie to pick. Well, being that I’ve seen the commercials and MTV movie special about the Julia Stiles’ epic, “Save the Last Dance” about five thousand times in the past month, my subconscious was telling me that I had to… no I needed to see Julia Stiles. I mean what is she doing, two steppin’?? So I regretfully picked up Down to You and headed to the counter trying my hardest to look as macho as possible. Then I saw them… Sno-Caps. What a perfect way to create a diversion.. picking up a box of candy that I could exclaim to the guy at the register, “Wow, I haven’t had these in ages.”, all in an attempt to distract him from looking at the movie that he held in his hand. Now sure, maybe if I had a girlfriend.. no distraction would’ve been necessary.. and an unspoken code of men who know what it’s like to have to rent bullshit teen dramas, in an attempt to secure sex after an hour and a half of mental torture might have taken place... but since I have no girlfriend, Sno-Caps are my only attempt at retaining dignity. No such luck. He saw right through me… He saw right through me in the way that any person with more than two brain cells sees right through the squeaky clean image of boy bands and knows that those guys are fucking anything with two legs, a vagina and the propensity to scream at levels that would wake up dogs from the dead. I mean, if you don’t believe that ten years from now, during the “VH1 Behind the Music” about N’SYNC, that you won’t see Lance Bass talking about how he had a scorching case of gonorrhea during the No Strings Attached Tour… well, then you’re just fooling yourself.
Alright, so after suffering through the humiliation of renting this movie, I pick up a couple of slices of pizza, pop this bad boy into the VCR, and prepare to be entertained by what surely will be some tour de force performances. Hey, so I like setting myself up for disappointment. Sue me. The opening sequence occurs in a coffee shop and right off the bat we see our protagonist, Mr. Freddie Prinze Jr…. Woo-hoo!! He looks right at the camera and oh shit… he starts talking to it. Breaking down the fourth wall. Wow, what an original concept. It’s at this point I look at the back of the box and see that this is going to be approximately 89 minutes of sheer hell. Freddie plays Al Connelly, a man who knows all about love at first sight and how that love can fade… How does he know this… Well, we’re in luck, this movie is all one giant flashback, so we get set to let him fill us in on the details. We flashback to a college bar where we meet Al’s two best friends… His friend, Monk, is in the porn industry and his other friend Eddie, is portrayed by Shawn Hatosy of Outside Providence and The Faculty fame, who I actually have always enjoyed as an actor… and am looking as possibly being a saving grace to offset Mr. Prinze. Jr’s, Al... Considering one of the first lines uttered by Eddie, is “Have you ever heard of the drinkining game “quarters”?… I know that Johnny Depp could be a co-star in this piece of shit and even the “King of Cool” couldn’t salvage this script, which was seemingly written by a guy who indeed did go to college, but spent all of his time in the computer lab like an Urkel. So we finally get to the scene where Al meets Julia Stiles’ character, Imogen. Wait a minute. Hit rewind. Imogen. Alright for a second I thought somebody put some shrooms in my pizza and I was starting to trip. Imogen. Her Mom picked it out of a name book, she explains. Well that makes sense then. Well, being that it is Julia Stiles, guess what one of the first things her character does is? Of course.. She dances!! Since there’s no street smart black guy with a heart of gold anywhere in the vicinity, the confusion that this might be “Save the Last Dance” passes. All of a sudden, a familiar face pops into the screen and passes Imogen a shot of what appears to be Jaromir Jagrmeister. Why it’s Ashton Kutcher of That 70’s Show and Dude, Where’s My Car fame. Get this, Imogen makes a comment that Ashton’s character looks just like Jim Morrison, to which Freddie Prinze Jr. replies, “His name is Jim Morrison.”. Wow, the label of “Romantic Comedy” on the side of the box has been justified. Al leaves the bar with porno in hand, where he runs into Imogen again. They hug. Therefore, let the romance begin!!! Al goes to her dorm room the next day where the following intellectual conversation takes place:
Imogen: “So, can I pschoanalyze you?”. Al also goes into the bathroom at one point and picks up Imogen’s bottle of shampoo to give it a good whiff. Something tells me that this shampoo will come into play later in the movie. Call me psychic. Oh, did I mention Al’s father is a television chef, played by Fonzie himself, Mr. Henry Winkler. Ayyy.. how sad is your career? The fact that his father is a chef does not in any way justify the stupidity of Al’s answer to the question of, “Favorite foods?”, by the way., Oh, and what kind of dialogue does Henry Winkler get stuck with? “Alfred, she is adorable. Get back to those potatoes.”. Poor Fonzie. He goes from jumping a shark on a motorcycle to jumping into roles that are like an advertisement for early retirement of 70’s icons. There is a scene in which Al and Imogen go out to dinner, in which Imogen asks if there is something stuck in her teeth. Let’s just say that Julia Stiles should make a movie called, “Save the Last Dentist Appointment”. So to save you about an hour of bullshit synopsis, let’s just say that Al and Imogen fall in love… Al spews some classically thought provoking lines, including, “She’s perfect for me.” and “You make me feel alive.”. Imogen ends up going to France for the summer and when she returns, things just seem different between her and Al. The “tingle” just isn’t there anymore. Also, for some unknown reason, Al’s friend Eddie grew a mullet over the summer. God, this is more painful than having to listen to the part in Jennifer Lopez’s song, “My Love Don’t Cost a Thing Except My Dignity, Mr. Combs” in which she screeches, “A thiiing… a thiiing.. a thiiing..” three straight times with hardly any music in the background. It’s that painful.
Wow, how could I forget, during the summer, Al and his Dad go out to dinner and discuss Al’s future. His Dad suggests that they do a cooking show together, titled “Cooks!”, which will be just like the television show “Cops”, only instead of busting into people’s homes and holding them at gunpoint to arrest them…. They’ll bust into people’s homes, hold them at gunpoint and cook for them. Are you fuckin kidding me? Well, now that Imogen has returned from France and the “tingle” is gone, the tension begins to mount between the couple and one night, Imogen doesn’t want to have sex with Al. Has she seen the light that she’s sleeping with a character with the emotional range of The Chief in One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest?.. or is there something deeper going on? Well, deeper maybe for this script, which is so shallow that you couldn’t even skip a pebble across of it. After refusing him sex, Al turns on the television and has a mini dream sequence which culminates with the time honored tradition of putting a movie character onto a popular television show of the day. In this case, Al appears on “The Man Show” and is grilled about why he is such a pussy by Adam Carolla and Jimmy Kimmel. It’s within this scene, that the only chuckle to ever leave my mouth so far occurs. One of the audience members asks, “Hey Al. Could you cross your legs? Your panties are starting to show.”. That’s how desperate I was to laugh, folks. Well, it turns out that Imogen is in the middle of the tried and true plot device of a pregnancy scare, in which we know the results will be either negative.. or positive with a subsequent miscarriage. It turns out negative.. but the whole ordeal has caused even more tension between the two characters. They end up going to a party thrown by Monk (the porn friend), in which Al begins talking to the porn star, Cyrus, who for some reason is using the phrase “Make me pancakes.”, as a metaphor for sticking his penis into her decrepit hole. Well, after Al shoots her down, he goes into the other room to find Imogen talking to Jim Morrison. Well, after Jim tells Al that Imogen is going to do the artwork for his album cover. (He’s a musician!! This is comedy.) Like I was saying though, after he finds out she’s designing Jim’s album cover, the shit hits the fan and Al makes a couple of horrible attempts at Doors references, such as calling Jim, “The Lizard King”. Well, a fight ensues, in which Imogen yells at Al and tells him he’s an old man and she hates him. Harsh… but true. Well, the next morning we see Al in bed alone as Imogen enters their apartment. “I slept with Jim last night.”, she informs him. Now here’s where the funniest part of the movie occurs. Al pauses, to let the obvious shock sink in, then he unleashes the most forced, “Get the fuck out!”, I’ve ever heard in my life. He said it, as if he was going to go wash his own mouth out with soap after the scene was over. For all intents and purposes, this is the end of their relationship.. or is it? Imogen moves out to San Francisco to pursue her art career while Al enrolls at the French Culinary Institute to follow in his father’s footsteps. Al is miserable however… and his passion for food just isn’t there anymore. He drops out of school and goes on a montage series of terrible dates that was blatantly stolen from the Saved by the Bell episode in which Zack tries to get on with his life after Kelly dumped him. Al gets a new apartment, in which he stays inside all day and befriends a spider. Ooookay. Then in attempt to prove that he is immune to the memory of Imogen, he tries to ingest a bottle of the shampoo that Imogen used to use. I knew that shampoo was going to come back to haunt him. Did I think that he was going to try and swallow it and end up having his stomach pumped? Ummm… not really. Well, Al’s Dad comes to the hospital and informs him that the network has picked up his “Cooks!” show idea. Yeah, right. Well then again, the UPN will show pretty much anything. Al wants no part of the show though, so he settles for his Dad throwing him a party instead. Well, guess who shows up at the party? You guessed it… Imogen. It turns out she was back in NYC promoting some new artwork that she had done. Al and Imogen go for a walk through Central Park and it’s just like old times. Unfortunately, Imogen’s plane back to S.F. is leaving in a few hours, so she has to leave. She leaves Al with a present and hops in a cab. Al opens the package and discovers the artwork on the cover of a book titled, “Down to You” (Hey that’s the title of the movie. OMG!!) is a really poor rendition of a picture of her and Al. Now wait a minute, there’s somebody behind Al. Well, it appears that Imogen got out of the cab and is ready to start this relationship all over again. I guess it’s a happy ending, if you overlook the fact that Al was a complete pussy who let his “soul mate” fuck a guy named Jim Morrison and completely cave in at the thought of life without her. Did I just type that? I think on that note, this movie review is over. The Final Verdict: Don’t walk… run to the video store, pick up every copy of “Down to You” that you can and run out of the store and proceed to throw them into oncoming traffic. You’ll be doing humanity a favor. Dave |
