07/08/06 I Love You, Don't Touch Me!

I Love You, Don't Touch Me! (1997), directed by Julie Davis

watched w/ Leslie; DVD rental (Netflix) @ home; suggested by Kelly

My friend Kelly has been recommending this movie to me since college, with me never getting around to watching it...until the Challenge that is. I don't know if Kelly still checks up on this website, but hopefully she won't be too disappointed with me on this review. I understand that this quirky little independent feature dealt with romantic entanglement, cutesy dialogue, and the modern (if you can count the mid-90's as still modern) dating scene from a frustrated female perspective. In it's own way, it was a precursor to such fare as "Sex And The City" in the way it took a female point-of-view to the sexual world of a fast-paced scatterbrained society. I respect that...however, I didn't like the film. I wanted to embrace the independent nature of this film & its unknown cast...but their attempts fell somewhat flat. We're all human, and all make mistakes in our lives...but with every step here you wanted to shake the ever-living crap out of the people to make them realize how silly they acted and how glaring some of their moral judgement oversight was. It's easy for me to say on the other side of the t.v. screen, I get that. What plays out is a typical love conundrum where Katie (our resident virgin) endures a plethora (do you even know what a plethora is?!) of bad dates in her failed attempts at meeting the right guy. She confides hesitantly in her more sexually active friend Janet and her best friend in platonic Ben. It's really Ben who Katie is meant for, as he pines away while her virtuous oblivion carries on. However, after many blatant tries at wooing her, Ben begins to date her loosey-goosey friend Janet (c'mon, he's going for the path of least resistance)...which Katie doesn't take to kindly to. To prove to herself more (see: ignore her true feelings), she takes a slimy suave suitor in Richard. Now completely lost in her own fantasy land, she loses her friends, let's the creep deflower her, gets cheated on, then patches things up with both friends by basically hooking up with Ben in the end. Surprise surprise. Maybe it's the mixed messages such a movie title implies...perhaps if they all were more attractive people who didn't have the stiff fashion sense that was the early 90's...it could have been the fact that Shabba Ranks was her lustful next door neighbor...or maybe it's the fact that the quips weren't quite consistent enough for me to fully enjoy it. I don't know exactly, but as the title prompts..."I tried it, so don't hate me."

2 out of 5 stars