Would you green-light this
unpromising script pitch? An assertiveness-training professor
with a minor in body language falls for a psychic
paleontologist who responds to men's impure thoughts with
compulsive violence. Sabotaging its minimal screwball
potential with two exceedingly charmless leads, SOLITAIRE FOR
TWO makes DUMB AND DUMBER and TOMMY BOY seem like triumphs of
gossamer sophistication.
Philandering Non-Verbal Communications professor Daniel
Becker (Mark Frankel) finds lasting love when he meets
no-nonsense paleontologist Katie Burrill (Amanda Pays), who
responds with a roundhouse punch. Dedicated to fossil research
and hoping to finalize a dream project in India, spinster
Katie is able to psychically read men's thoughts--or at least
the lewd ones. During her first date with smitten Daniel,
mindreader Katie KOs the waiter for nursing sexual desires
about her. Daniel's unrelenting passion initially drives Katie
deeper into prehistoric studies with her associate
Sandip Tamar (Roshan Seth), whom she believes to be asexual.
Sending out mixed signals to each other, the couple argue
heatedly and often. On the eve of her departure for India,
Katie causes friction between Daniel and his married friends
with her unsolicited psychic pronouncements. But when she
realizes that Tamar also also has sexual designs on her, Katie
shelves her dream project and opts for married life with
Daniel, who's sworn off playing the field forever.
SOLITAIRE FOR TWO is one of those creaky romantic
fabrications full of pathetic running gags (Katie's pugilistic
responses) and few payoffs (Daniel's mildest-mannered pupil
takes his assertiveness training so well that he pulls a
pistol on his nasty boss). These slight synthetic comic bits
mesh perfectly with a story line so billowy it seems to have
been written on thistles.
Not only does the film's direction have all the pull of an
infomercial, but the tacky dialogue appears to have been
penned by "Dating Game" staffers trying to recycle double
entendres into a full-length screenplay. There's something
especially disheartening about a smutty romantic comedy; it's
as if one awakens after a one-night stand to find one's
bedmate and one's wallet gone. Violated by this dysfunctional
bedroom farce, the audience finds nothing humorous in this
valentine to violence. (Extreme profanity, nudity, sexual
situations, violence.)
