You Know What? Two Okay Comedies!

I watched Heartbreakers (David Mirkin, 2001) only because Mirkin's sole other directorial effort is my beloved Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997). Predictably, it's not fit to shine Romy and Michele's Pradas. The main problem is that it has a 123-minute running time as opposed to Romy and Michele's 92 minutes, far too long for such a bauble. Still, Mirkin pulls off the neat trick of fashioning a cute film out of a nasty story about mother-and-daughter con artists (Sigourney Weaver and Jennifer Love Hewitt). Featuring the last onscreen appearance of Anne Bancroft and one of the last glimpses of the Twin Towers in a contemporary film. 

Switch (Blake Edwards, 1991) is lesser Edwards about a pieceashit sexist (Perry King) who is murdered by three wronged women. He ascends to Purgatory where God (voiced by a man and a woman) works with The Devil (Bruce Martyn Payne, looking like the love child of Gillian Anderson and Matthew McConaughey) to send him back to earth in the body of a woman (Ellen Barkin, up to the task and then some). If he can get one woman to like him, he will gain entry into heaven. 2022 viewers will twist themselves into a wiener package trying to determine if this film is transphobic or homophobic or whatnot. For sure, its view of gender is pretty rigid. Me, I'm content with the fact that the word "homophobic" is even uttered in the film. It was from the early 1990s, after all, an era which is quickly sliding into a "that's how things were back then" profile. In fact, I just helped it along that path.

Heartbreakers: B+

Switch: B+