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Film: Old wave cinema

French romantic comedy goes Hollywood with Jet Lag

One of the few transcendent moments of the romantic comedy Jet Lag is its very first one. Rose (Juliette Binoche) introduces herself by recounting how, as a young girl, she got caught cutting school, fresh from walking out of a theater playing Roman Holiday. It at once sets up a thematic preoccupation with self-loathing and cultural prejudice, Rose's love for Hollywood and fame, and her character's obvious admiration for Holiday's Audrey Hepburn--the latter evidenced in Rose's faux-iconic appearance and, like Hepburn's Princess Ann, her fleeing from that which restrains her.

Rose, a successful yet easily flustered cosmetologist, is escaping an overbearing husband, Sergio (Sergi Lopez). After she borrows a cell phone from fellow traveler and former celebrity chef Félix (Jean Reno), he keeps getting calls for her and feels obligated to track her down. This--along with a labor strike, inclement weather and technological snafus that ground all the travelers at Paris' Charles de Gaulle Airport--sets up the inevitable romance.

This is no Breathless or Amélie. romance-oriented French films that bucked the conventions of the Hollywood love story. Rather, Jet Lag embraces the time-tested American models of depicting couples falling in love. While the lack of Euro pretension can be nice, the movie feels like the same sort of unimaginative chick flick that has thrown cold water on Hollywood romance.

Writer-director Danile Thompson and co-writer Christopher Thompson come off as the Gallic equivalent of Nora Ephron. Their dialogue, ably delivered by Binoche and Reno, occasionally reveals more depth than your standard Meg Ryan kiss-fest. But they cram an awful lot of discovery in a short period, and the implausibility and self-consciousness takes the fun out of starry-eyed fantasy. By the time Félix suggests, "Let's stop the movie, Rose," you've had enough too.--Mike Prevatt

Girlpower Inc.

Resolving whether Freaky Friday is a decent movie even though it's another simplistic, feel-good Disney flick, or just mindless fluff attempting to pass itself off as more hip and nuanced than 1976's Barbara Harris/Jodie Foster original, isn't hugely significant in the scheme of things.

In case you're interested, the 2003 plot concerns a day-long personality switch between widowed professional mom Tess Coleman (Jamie Lee Curtis) and her adolescent daughter, Anna (Lindsay Lohan). What's more interesting, however, is the portrayal of the headstrong, teenage female lead when she's her true self.

With Anna, director Mark S. Waters, screenwriters Heather Hach and Leslie Dixon and actress Lohan are seemingly tapping into the Hollywood "girl power" ethos. The concept is familiar: A likeable, unconventional young woman faces problems that sometimes stem from her own insecurities, including attraction to conformity, or repulsion from it, but she overcomes them with a mixture of courage and compassion to forge her own destiny. Some of the most compelling, imaginative expressions of the genre are found in TV's "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" (which recently ended its six-year run) and "Gilmore Girls," and the films Girlfight and Whale Rider.

But here the filmmakers are actually offering a slickly packaged, but unremarkable misfit who looks ready to pose for Juicy Couture. Anna's a flat-abbed rocker with a pierced belly button and strategically placed streaks of blond in her auburn hair. Her tight-fitting shirts and cargo pants look like thrift store bargains, but they're high-priced threads. To tie the package up in a neat little bow, she's enamored with a sensitive, shaggy-haired, skinny-as-a-ferret guy (Chad Murray) who's both a barista and a biker. Instead of being a charismatic character who breaks the mold in delightfully funny ways, Anna is nothing but a cinematic billboard with Britney's body and Avril's clothes.--Tammy McMahan