Movies – Hitch

starring Will Smith, Eva Mendes and Kevin James
directed by Andy Tennant, written by Kevin Bisch

Now, I’m a fan of Will Smith’s. He’s engaging and open, and brings a joi de vivre to his work. Hitch shows off these charms delightfully. Smith pays the title “Hitch”, a date doctor who coaches guys on how not to overwhelm the girls of their dreams, so that the relationships can progress to deeper levels. Of course, he’s been so badly burned in his past, he’s not very good at getting to his own deeper levels. Given that, when he’s dropped into the circumstances of coaching an accountant on how to win a high-profile heiress, he’s not prepared to find himself falling for a major gossip columnist.

Will Smith and Eva Mendes in “Hitch”

It’s a perfectly tangled situation, but the real charm of this movie is that all the characters (well, except for an incidental jerk crucial to the plot, played by the always excellent Jeffrey Donovan) are appealing. We’re not watching a story of people overcoming unappealing flaws, we watching nice people overcome misunderstandings and their own defenses.

The extras on the DVD are fun. In the interviews, there is also the information that Smith insisted that the script be reviewed by a psychologist. That’s an interesting tid-bit, and may indicate one of the factors that makes for the film’s charm: time and energy was spent on getting the characters “just right”. In an age when too many films are rushed before cameras without polishing, the craftsmanship here shines.

Smith also wins points with me by not trying to up-stage Kevin James. James, a funny man in his own right, is very sweet as the unlikely accountant Romeo. The scenes with these two guys together are very funny and human. The different styles mesh, and they work together very well indeed.