Suburban Girl
Suburban
Girl pops into the suddenly very crowded sub-genre of bright young women
moving to the big city in search of romance and professional gratification
while enduring a hellish job. (See also: The Devil Wears Prada, The
Nanny Diaries and more.) Not that this New York fantasy is that
new -- these stories date back to even before His Girl Friday (which,
in fairness, took place in Chicago), but there seem to be a torrent of them
lately.
This one
has somehow fallen through the cracks and never even got a theatrical
release, instead getting slipped out directly onto video. It is too
bad, because Suburban Girl is an intelligent romantic comedy that
probably deserves a bigger audience than the straight-to-DVD tag will likely
afford it.
It was
obviously made with great care and a reasonably good budget. It's
certainly a better movie than Nanny, though the movie doesn't quite
live up to Prada. It's even catching lightning in a bottle in
the fact that, by coincidence, its theme song, "Love Story" by Sara
Bareilles, is on the top of the pop charts as the film gets its release.
(Ironically, Prada's opening credits song, "Suddenly I See" by KT
Tunstall, also happened to follow the movie up the charts without any
particular cross-promotion.)
Sarah
Michelle Gellar plays Brett, a beautiful and literate woman who dreams of
making it big in the book publishing biz. However, she is getting
nowhere fast, and when her boss is fired and replaced by a Eurotrash
glitterati fast-tracker (Vanessa Branch) who is rumored to be sleeping her
way to the top, Brett is nearly ready to give up on her dreams.
It is then
what she meets Archie Knox, a fast-talking, romantic, alcoholic legend in
book publishing. They become friends, then he becomes her mentor, then
they are lovers -- despite the fact that he is nearly as old as her father. Alec Baldwin
captures the perfect balance in this fascinating and complicated character.
Archie is a contradiction of confidence and neediness, swagger and
insecurity, caring and selfishness, satisfaction and gnawing emptiness.
These two
well-drawn characters and the fine literacy of the script almost make you
overlook the fact that the movie all too often clunks into melodrama and
cliché, particularly on some subplots centering on Brett's father (James
Naughton).
Still,
perfect or not (and it's not, sadly), what is good about Suburban Girl
for the most part outpaces its bad patches, so it is worth a rental.
Alex
Diamond
Copyright ©2008 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved.
Posted: February 1, 2008.
