What A Girl Wants Review
by Steve Rhodes (Steve DOT Rhodes AT InternetReviews DOT com)March 3rd, 2003
WANT
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 2003 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): ***
Michael Wohl's WANT is "Dilbert" meets STARTUP.COM combined with the support groups from FIGHT CLUB. Set in 1999, the high point of the internet gold rush, the film claims to take place in the Silicon Valley but is actually filmed in San Francisco, which most certainly is not in the Silicon Valley. But that quibble and an unnecessary subplot about an alcoholic father are about the only things wrong with this brightly written comedy.
Trey Segal (Barry Alan Levine) is a software testing engineer at a shopping web site, but he wants more than what his eighty-thousand dollar salary plus stock options can give him. He wants to come up with some big idea that will make him filthy rich. Most of the good ones seem to be already taken, so he's been thinking as hard as he can lately to come up with something fresh.
His latest idea is milkandcookies.com. A fleet of vans equipped with ovens and wireless internet connections will drive around delivering hot cookies on demand. An idea of his buddy's is a gory video game that will require the users to take apart real guns in order to figure out how to get ahead in the game. They will ship the guns from Thailand. When the kids take the weapons to school, the cops will come and arrest the youngsters, generating lots of free publicity.
Trey's life has more complications than just those involving entrepreneurial schemes. At work, the next software release is falling behind schedule. Broken espresso machines and other complications have caused the cubical dwellers' productivity to slip. Trey has a special problem all of his own, which involves his inability to form relationships with real people. On porn chat rooms, he has no trouble in dealing with women, but he finds himself saying "Undo! Undo!" when he accidentally makes an untoward sexual comment to a fellow coworker whom he would like to date.
Most of the jokes work in WANT, so it's hard to pick out favorites. One of the best has nothing to do with high tech. Convinced that happiness comes from the most overpriced and overstuffed SUV, Trey gets hoodwinked by a sleazy car salesman. Does his big land yacht make him any happier? Nope, it just increases his road rage.
WANT runs 1:38. It is not rated but would be an R for sex, nudity and language and would be acceptable for older teenagers.
The film is being shown as part of San Jose's Cinequest Film Festival (www.Cinequest.org), which runs February 27 to March 9, 2003.
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