Brad reviews HITCH (2005), starring Will Smith and Kevin James!

Posted on December 2, 2025 by Bradley Crain

I guess you can call this the holiday season of love for me, as I turn my attention today toward the 2005 romantic comedy HITCH. Will Smith stars as Alex “Hitch” Hitchens, a somewhat legendary and highly discreet consultant based in New York City. His specialty… helping less than perfect, even slightly awkward, men win the hearts of beautiful women. His methods are very effective, but he only works with men who are genuinely in love and not just chasing a one-night stand. His latest lovelorn client, the sweet and clumsy tax accountant Albert Brennaman (Kevin James), is smitten with a famous heiress named Allegra Cole (Amber Valletta), a client of the tax firm he works for. As Hitch works his magic for Albert, he also meets the cynical, but extremely beautiful tabloid journalist Sara Melas (Eva Mendes). Hitch finds himself falling for Sara at the same time that she’s on the trail of an urban myth of a “Date Doctor,” mistakenly believing that he is exploiting the emotions of women in the city for his own personal gain. When Sara and Amber discover who Hitch really is, will the guys’ true love win the day, or will the ladies believe it was all just a sleazy, manipulative setup?

HITCH is one of my favorite romantic comedies, and I watch it every year, usually multiple times. I’m a romantic at heart, and I really enjoy a film that plays with the idea of characters who truly care about, and respect, each other. This dynamic plays out through several different relationships. My favorite is the genuine friendship that develops between Hitch and Albert Brennamen. Hitch recognizes the sincere feelings that Albert has for Allegra, and he then goes all in to help him win her heart. While Will Smith is effortlessly charming and in peak movie star form, unsurprisingly, the character I identify the most with is Kevin James as Albert. His character is so sweet and earnest in his pursuit of Allegra that you just can’t help but pull for him. Balance that part of his character with James’ excellent physical comedy, whether it be his natural clumsiness or his unfounded confidence in his dance moves, and James gives the performance that takes this movie over the top for me. When teaching Albert the dance moves that he should stick with when he’s out on a date with Allegra, Hitch utters the line, “Don’t you bite your lip. Stop it!” It was that moment when I realized that, like Albert, I never dance without biting my own lip!

While the fraternal love between Hitch and Albert is my favorite relationship in the film, I also like the romantic relationship that develops between Hitch and Sara. I appreciate the way both characters step out of their comfort zones and risk their own hearts for each other. This is not easy for either of them, as Hitch’s charm and confidence actually masks deep insecurities based on his past relationships. Sara, on the other hand, has allowed herself to become very cynical towards all men, building walls so tall that no man can climb them. The fact that they truly open themselves up to each other, even if there are some serious complications along the way, gave me a strong rooting interest in their happiness.

The last performance I wanted to highlight in HITCH is that of Jeffrey Donovan, who plays sleazy narcissist Vance Munson. Munson tries to hire Hitch to help him get a vulnerable woman into bed, and in a moment of pure audience satisfaction, he pays the price for his disrespect. About the time I watched HITCH, Donovan was starring in a T.V. series that I really enjoyed called BURN NOTICE. I’m a big fan of Donovan, and he’s perfect here as a man you love to hate. In a movie full of likable characters, Vance Munson was a needed counterpoint, and his A-hole character really stands out.

No movie is perfect, but if you’re in the mood for something that’s lighthearted, funny, and makes you want to fall in love, then HITCH is about as close as it gets.

Funny Money (2006, directed by Leslie Greif)

Posted on February 4, 2025 by Jedadiah Leland

Henry Perkins (Chevy Chase), the most boring man alive, has a job making wax fruit while his wife (Penelope Ann Miller) wants to make a living through drawing naked men. (I guess that’s fair considering how many men make their living by drawing naked women.) On Henry’s birthday, Henry spots a briefcase just like his and decides to swap them. At home, Henry discovers that his new briefcase contains five million dollars!

Henry wants to move to Europe immediately. But every time he and his wife try to leave their home, something occurs. A menacing cop (Armanda Assante) shows up. Henry’s friends drop by to celebrate his birthday. The Romanian mob makes an appearance, looking for their money. All Henry and his wife want to do is steal the money but instead, they spend a night dealing with false identities, physical comedy, and slapstick humor.

Funny Money was based on a stage play and it seems like the sort of thing that would have been hilarious if viewed live, with everyone running on and off the stage and some genuine suspense about who was going to show up next. It does not translate well to film. This would have been a good vehicle for Chase in the 80s or even the 90s but, by the time the movie was made, Chase seemed old and tired. Penelope Ann Miller is never convincing as Chase’s wife. (Someone should have tried to reunite Chase with Beverly D’Angelo or even Goldie Hawn for this movie.) The main problem is that the supporting characters are never as funny or as quick-on-their-feet as the film needs them to be. Armand Assante doesn’t seem to know he’s in a comedy. Even a reliable actor like Christopher McDonald is let down by the film’s script and direction. That’s too bad because the material had potential. While it’s not a disaster like Cops and Robbersons, Funny Money is still never funny enough.

Dying Is Easy, Comedy is Hard: Freeloaders (dir by Dan Rosen)

Posted on September 4, 2013 by Lisa Marie Bowman

Supposedly, the great comedic character actor Edmund Gwenn once said, “Dying is easy. Comedy is hard.”

I have to agree because I’ve seen a lot of comedies in 2013. A few of them — like This Is The End and The World’s End — have worked. However, the majority of them have not only been bad but they’ve been so bad that they’ve invited audiences to wonder if comedy is a dying art form. For every genuinely clever comedy, it seems like we’ve had to sit through a dozen Movie 43s. These are movies where genuinely funny people get together and proceed to prove that they can be just as unfunny as the obnoxious cousin that everyone avoids at the family reunion.

Case in point: Freeloaders.

Even Movie 43 made me laugh once. That’s one laugh more than I got out of Freeloaders. Freeloaders is quite possibly the least funny comedy that I’ve ever seen. Freeloaders almost feels like a social experiment, a test to see what would happen if an audience, expecting to see a silly and crude comedy, instead found themselves trapped in a laugh-repellent environment for 80 minutes.

Freeloaders tells the story of a group of stereotypes who have spent the last six years living in a mansion owned by “rock star” Adam Duritz. It turns out that one of them is a childhood friend of Duritz’s and, since Duritz has been out touring for the past decade, he’s allowed his friends to occupy his home rent-free. However, Duritz is getting married and planning on moving to New York City and, as a result, he’s selling his mansion. The freeloaders are told that they have a week to get out of the mansion. Well, since everyone in this film is basically a total and complete dumbass, nobody can figure out how to rent an apartment. So, instead, they come up with some painfully wacky schemes to raise the money to buy the mansion themselves. Standing in their way is Adam’s real estate agent who …. well, it’s never really all that clear why she’s standing in their way. Presumably, it’s because there wouldn’t be a film unless she was standing in their way and then we would have all missed out on the chance to watch Freeloaders.

Why doesn’t Freeloaders work?

Well, let’s start by considering the fact that Adam Duritz plays himself. I actually had to go on Wikipedia to remind myself who Adam Duritz is and I discovered that he’ was apparently a big deal back in the 90s and that he’s responsible for that painfully annoying cover of Big Yellow Taxi that was playing everywhere back in the summer of 2003. Unfortunately, as both an actor and as a “fictional” character, Adam Duritz is so bland that his character serves mostly as a distraction. The use of a real celebrity (if Adam Duritz can legitimately be called a celebrity) should have provided the filmmakers with a lot of comedic opportunity but that opportunity is pretty much wasted because Freeloaders seems to be obsessed with letting us know that Adam Duritz is a really great guy.

(That might be because Adam Duritz was one of the film’s producers.)

While I doubt that Adam Duritz has ever been a funny guy, Freeloaders is filled with other actors who have proven themselves to be funny in the past. I, for one, was excited to see the name Nat Faxon in the opening credits because, while he might not be a household name, anyone who has ever seen Nat Faxon in a movie knows just how funny he can be. However, both Mr. Faxon and the rest of cast struggle with the fact that they’re playing a collection of one-dimensional stereotypes. Everyone has one overly defining, predictable trait to help us keep them straight. There’s the nice guy, the stoner, the womanizer, the nice girl, the hoodlum, and the girl who will inspire some in the audience to say, “Is that Olivia Munn?,” largely because she is Olivia Munn. Since they’re never allowed to become individual characters, all of their attempts at humor fall painfully flat. It doesn’t help that director Dan Rosen directs without any hint of timing or originality.

Freeloaders was produced by Broken Lizard, the comedy troupe that’s developed a large cult following as the result of films like Super Troopers and Club Dread. However, the members of Broken Lizard did not write or direct the film and they only appear in a rather brief cameo where they parody Boogie Nights.

The Boogie Nights parody is actually fairly clever but it also highlights this film’s biggest problem. Freeloaders was originally filmed in 2009 and then sat on the shelf until it finally got a very limited theatrical release earlier this year. (Perhaps that’s why one of the film’s characters worries about getting sent to Iraq if he joins the army.) However, the script feels like it was written back in the 90s. Everything from the premise of slacker stoners being forced to raise money to Adam Duritz being described as a world-famous star to Broken Lizard parodying a film that came out in 1997 serves to make this film feel as if it was made about 14 years too late.

I love a good comedy but, by that same regard, there’s nothing a i hate more than a really bad comedy. However, as a film lover, I will always be willing to take chance on comedy. Comedy may be hard but the rewards are great.

Sometimes, you end up with something really special.

Sometimes, you just end up with Freeloaders.