Remember Freddie Prinze Jr.? He was going to be the next big thing, but Scooby Doo ruined his acting career and Prinze became a sort of parody of himself. Over the last couple of years he has attempted to clamber his way back to the top of the ladder but it’s been a hard task, in Vanessa Parise’s movie, could he finally have found his path back.
Jack is a business executive, he has everything he needs; smart clothes, healthy living, a fast car, and a job he loves. With only a normal school education how has he garnered this success? For every lifestyle situation Jack is given a book by his father Norman (Robert Forster), as result everything Jack knows he has learned from books. In practise this is fine, but when it comes to the fundamentals of building a relationship Jack fails miserably and has spent his entire adult life single. Into Jack’s life steps Jill (Taryn Manning) a quirky woman from out of town struggling to make a career in acting. She immediately homes in on Jack’s weaknesses and trains him to be better, it’s a relationship made in heaven. She treats him to be careful about food, charitable, and above all how to be honest. This is fine to a limit, but Jill is keeping something from Jack, she suffers from Cystic Fibrosis and in her late 20’s she must realise that she is nearing the end of her life, if only she could bring herself to tell Jack.
As a romantic comedy Jack And Jill Verses The World is a miserable failure, as a tool for informing the world on a illness that strikes a startling amount of people. Call me naive but having heard of Cystic Fibrosis repeatedly during my life I actually knew little about the illness prior to this movie, now I feel like I could hold a seminar on the subject. I guess in the back of my mind I realised this was a serious illness but chucked it in the same bag as Cerebral Palsy and similar illnesses without bothering to investigate, I was must upset that I had not given thought to this illness that claims 20,000 lives worldwide each year most of its victims never living beyond their 30’s, most too ill to experience the joy of running, drinking, travelling, and sex. On this basis the movie scores a point on its own, because if I think about all the thousands of movies I have seen in my life I believe this is the only one that raises this tragic illness.
The result of the illness that Jill suffers from changes the basis of the whole movie allowing you to look with very different eyes at the world that surrounds us or most importantly here Jill. I guess knocking the movie for its lack of comedy is unfair, but it does tout itself as a comedy, but let’s face it it’s only likely to have a limited series of vaguely humorous moments.
As a drama however the movie works well, but not as a big movie this seemingly belongs in the TV movie genre, because it’s a movie with message. Vanessa Parise simply does not have the power to convey the message to a successful big screen movie, and this is why in the US the movie quickly shot through cinemas with a whimper rather than a bang. Having co-wrote and directed the movie as well as starred in a crucial role to me its evident that Parise was too close to the movie to clearly see where it was going.
It’s stars perform well Prinze is starting to show his age and is now bulkier than most people might remember him from teen comedies She’s All That and Down To You, at times I had to double take because I was not 100% certain that I was watching Prinze on more than one occasion. I’d have to say that Prinze is a capable actor rather than a good one and if he hoped that this movie would be the one that transported him back to the A-List he will be sadly mistaken.
Taryn Manning whose previous movies included After Sex, Hustle And Flow, and Weirdsville is the quirky wonder of the piece, putting aside the illness her character suffers with, Taryn lights up the screen with each scene she appears in; sadly this is not the movie to escalate her Hollywood standing either.
The story itself to be honest is a little threadbare it does not have the required amount of detail to push the viewer through, so while creating a perfect lazy Sunday afternoon TV movie it does not deliver that little bit of pizzazz that we expect from a big budget offering like this.
Jack And Jill Verses The World is currently with the British Board Of Film Classification, its future will be decided upon from there I guess. I suspect this will be a straight to DVD movie, though I cannot at this stage guarantee how UK audiences will see it
Jack is a business executive, he has everything he needs; smart clothes, healthy living, a fast car, and a job he loves. With only a normal school education how has he garnered this success? For every lifestyle situation Jack is given a book by his father Norman (Robert Forster), as result everything Jack knows he has learned from books. In practise this is fine, but when it comes to the fundamentals of building a relationship Jack fails miserably and has spent his entire adult life single. Into Jack’s life steps Jill (Taryn Manning) a quirky woman from out of town struggling to make a career in acting. She immediately homes in on Jack’s weaknesses and trains him to be better, it’s a relationship made in heaven. She treats him to be careful about food, charitable, and above all how to be honest. This is fine to a limit, but Jill is keeping something from Jack, she suffers from Cystic Fibrosis and in her late 20’s she must realise that she is nearing the end of her life, if only she could bring herself to tell Jack.
As a romantic comedy Jack And Jill Verses The World is a miserable failure, as a tool for informing the world on a illness that strikes a startling amount of people. Call me naive but having heard of Cystic Fibrosis repeatedly during my life I actually knew little about the illness prior to this movie, now I feel like I could hold a seminar on the subject. I guess in the back of my mind I realised this was a serious illness but chucked it in the same bag as Cerebral Palsy and similar illnesses without bothering to investigate, I was must upset that I had not given thought to this illness that claims 20,000 lives worldwide each year most of its victims never living beyond their 30’s, most too ill to experience the joy of running, drinking, travelling, and sex. On this basis the movie scores a point on its own, because if I think about all the thousands of movies I have seen in my life I believe this is the only one that raises this tragic illness.
The result of the illness that Jill suffers from changes the basis of the whole movie allowing you to look with very different eyes at the world that surrounds us or most importantly here Jill. I guess knocking the movie for its lack of comedy is unfair, but it does tout itself as a comedy, but let’s face it it’s only likely to have a limited series of vaguely humorous moments.
As a drama however the movie works well, but not as a big movie this seemingly belongs in the TV movie genre, because it’s a movie with message. Vanessa Parise simply does not have the power to convey the message to a successful big screen movie, and this is why in the US the movie quickly shot through cinemas with a whimper rather than a bang. Having co-wrote and directed the movie as well as starred in a crucial role to me its evident that Parise was too close to the movie to clearly see where it was going.
It’s stars perform well Prinze is starting to show his age and is now bulkier than most people might remember him from teen comedies She’s All That and Down To You, at times I had to double take because I was not 100% certain that I was watching Prinze on more than one occasion. I’d have to say that Prinze is a capable actor rather than a good one and if he hoped that this movie would be the one that transported him back to the A-List he will be sadly mistaken.
Taryn Manning whose previous movies included After Sex, Hustle And Flow, and Weirdsville is the quirky wonder of the piece, putting aside the illness her character suffers with, Taryn lights up the screen with each scene she appears in; sadly this is not the movie to escalate her Hollywood standing either.
The story itself to be honest is a little threadbare it does not have the required amount of detail to push the viewer through, so while creating a perfect lazy Sunday afternoon TV movie it does not deliver that little bit of pizzazz that we expect from a big budget offering like this.
Jack And Jill Verses The World is currently with the British Board Of Film Classification, its future will be decided upon from there I guess. I suspect this will be a straight to DVD movie, though I cannot at this stage guarantee how UK audiences will see it
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