TrueJoshNight Truly Dreadful Film

Konterr Brilliant and touching

Hulkeasexo it is the rare 'crazy' movie that actually has something to say.

FrogGlace In other words,this film is a surreal ride.

Python Hyena Little Black Book (2004): Dir: Nick Hurran / Cast: Brittany Murphy, Holly Hunter, Ron Livingston, Kathy Bates, Julianne Nicholson: Perhaps the best romantic comedy of the year boasting a strong argument for relationships and trust. Brittany Murphy is hired as a producer of a talk show where she devises an idea regarding little black books. She seeks out her boyfriend's past relationships in a test for faithfulness. Surprisingly detailed with a knockout finale. Director Nick Hurran does a fantastic job and backed by a hilarious yet convicting performance by Murphy who wishes to succeed in the job media yet seeks an honest relationship. This will require soul searching when guilt overtakes the reality of deception for which she lived. Holly Hunter is superb as her mentor who stirs many of the ideas. Ron Livingston who is outrageously funny in Office Space plays it straight here as the boyfriend who is a sports agent with a questionable past. Kathy Bates is well cast as a talk show host possibly inspired by Jerry Springer. The ex-girlfriends sought after are all interesting and played well by Julianne Nicholson, Rashida Jones and Josie Maran. Reality is that we are often curious of the personal lives of others and talk shows such as the one in this film gives an effective portrayal. Excellent romantic comedy about honesty while exposing media talk shows. Score: 10 / 10

MBunge From the female perspective, this movie is about women brutally screwing each other over. From the male perspective, it's about your seemingly perfect girlfriend turning into a psychotic bitch for no reason. Add in a spastic performance by Brittany Murphy, about 1/4th of the film being nothing but an infomercial for the greatest hits of Carly Simon and comedy that starts out at dog farts and goes downhill from there. The result is that Little Black Book is repellent to virtually every possible viewer.Stacy (Brittany Murphy) is the main character of this disaster. She would be pathetic as a real person and is even worse as a fictional protagonist. Stacy is overwrought, bug-eyed and empty of anything except an unexamined, childlike desire to work with Diane Sawyer. She gets a job at a syndicated talk show based in New Jersey, which becomes the pretext for an endless series of jibes at the low-brow, trashy nature of such programs. The only other thing in Stacy's life is her live-in boyfriend Derek (Ron Livingston). He appears to be perfect so, of course, Stacy isn't satisfied with that.Egged on by Barb (Holly Hunter), her fellow associate producer and the Friedrich Nietzsche of daytime talk shows, Stacy gets a hold of Derek's palm pilot while he's out of town and finds information in there about his old girlfriends. Putting aside how incredibly quickly the palm pilot became a dated reference, Stacy lies to Derek's old girlfriends to find out what she thinks he's been hiding from her. If you think that comes back to bite Stacy in the butt, you're only partly correct.I will admit that Little Black Book is energetic and has a quick pace. Holly Hunter also appears to be having a great time playing Barb. That's about all the praise I can give to this narrative malformation.I think I can sum up how awfully written this film is in one sentence. Stacy spends the whole movie acting like a manic, lying bitch and the audience is still supposed to be rooting for her at the end. How is that supposed to work? This thing was written by two women, but there's a scene in a gynecologist's office that could have come from the mind of a 19 year old frat boy. There's a cameo appearance by musician Gavin Rossdale that's so obtrusive and unnecessary it's like a 19 year old frat boy taking a trip to a gynecologist's office. The story casts Stacy as the product of a broken home and a self-absorbed mother, then brings the mother back at the end to cheer on her daughter as she achieves her greatest dreams, as though mom weren't responsible for most of Stacy's personal dysfunction.The glimmer of an idea in the sunken pit where the heart of this movie is supposed to be is that Stacy is the girl in the romantic comedy who gets in between the two people who are destined to be together. In this case, that's Derek and one of his old girlfriends. It's the old trick of taking the same story you've seen before and telling it from the viewpoint of a minor character. The difficulty is that most romantic comedies delight in making the Stacy-character as big a skank as they can, while this one desperately tries to make her sympathetic. It doesn't work, particularly since the film also goes to great length to portray Derek and his old girlfriend as utterly wonderful, despite Derek not telling his live-in girlfriend of a year that he continues to have ongoing friendships with two of his exes. If these filmmakers had made Derek out to be a bastard and let Stacy and the old girlfriend run away together, at least that would have been something.Little Black Book is 98% annoying, 1% cloying and 1%…well, I can't think of another negative adjective that rhymes with "oying". This is the sort of movie that ends careers, and it largely did that to Brittany Murphy's.

gwyn-2 This movie is terrible. It is a toe-squirming example of the pointless sludge Hollywood is so keen on – there is no message, no edge, no beauty in it. It's not even funny.I don't understand why they insist on blowing perfectly good money away on awful sugary films like this. This story could have been pretty good in the hands of the right people, but here it's told just so smoothly and dishonest, hatefully playing with your emotions, and actually succeeding in making you well up, but leaving you feeling hollow and sick.One of the major lows is the girl that plays the main character: she is just obnoxious… overacting, showing no real emotion (the way she was standing there with her face covered in snot and tears without wiping it off – I felt like slapping her in the face, I actually shouted at the screen. And then there was that terrible dog and the way she talked to it), awful! You don't for one moment believe that she even loves her boyfriend.The rest of the cast was actually rather good (did I detect hints of fear in some eyes sometimes?), especially the girl with the freckles, though Holly Hunter was fairly annoying.To each his own I suppose, but i cannot see the value of this vehicle.

dej99 I watched this movie because I like many of the actors: Holly Hunter, Kathy Bates, and Ron Livingston. Brittany Murphy is cute and appealing. But every scene was excruciatingly painful and there was nothing to redeem the film. The narration (by the main character) was trite, the plot was thin, and too much time was spent on the behind-the-scenes of a trashy daytime talk show (we all know that these shows are drivel and the producers lack integrity---please tell us something that we don't know). If it weren't a lazy Sunday morning, I would have certainly changed the channel. Please, don't be fooled, and don't waste your time. I have never bothered to review a movie based on how negatively I feel about it, but this movie took the cake.