I Could Never Be Your Woman

I Could Never Be Your Woman
by Amy Heckerling

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DVD details

Actor: Michelle Pfeiffer, Paul Rudd, Saoirse Ronan, Stacey Dash, Tracey Ullman
Director: Amy Heckerling
Writer: Amy Heckerling
Producer: Alan Latham
Producer: Alastair Burlingham
Producer: Cerise Hallam Larkin
Producer: Chris Thompson
Producer: Elie Samaha
Producer: Hugh Spurling
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Original Language)
Format: Color, NTSC, Widescreen
Running Time: 97 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2008-02-12
Audience Rating: PG-13 (Parental Guidance Suggested)
Studio: Weinstein Company

DVD Reviews of I Could Never Be Your Woman

DVD Review: Very funny
Summary: 5 Stars

I really enjoyed this movie.I thought Michelle Pfeiifer and Paul Rudd were great.They really had some good chemistry.This movie is definetly worth buying especially if you are a Michelle Pfeiffer fan.

DVD Review: A Mixed Bag
Summary: 3 Stars

If not exactly a one-hit wonder, Amy Heckerling is certainly a mystery. After directing the highly successful "Fast Times at Ridgement High (1982) and writing/directing an excellent modern adaptation of Jane Austins's "Emma"- insert "Clueless" (1995) here - it appeared that she had a unique connection with both teenage viewers and those nostalgic about their teenage years.

Then she spectacularly crashed and burned with the appropriately named "Loser" (2000). That career breaker would be in the running for a "worst film of all time" designation, were it not for its modest scale. Nonetheless it exposed huge deficiencies in Heckerling's writing talents, acting for the camera directing skills, and basic judgment.

Six years and no films later she was finally able to cobble together another modest scale film "I Could Never Be Your Woman", which is much closer to "Loser" in concept and execution than to her successful films.

Heckerling is at heart an expressionistic movie-maker; a fine quality except that mainstream audiences, used to a steady diet of movie realism, sometimes just don't get it. Her two main successes were situations where the surreal stuff was an ironic undercurrent masked by a realistic facade. With "Loser" her elements went out of balance and she repeats this same mistake in the main storyline here; a blend of the Hollywood insider story Altman did so well in "The Player" and the standard Lifetime Channel exploration of female angst, aging, and discontent.

Fortunately there is parallel storyline involving the main character's middle school daughter, which allows Heckerling to get back to what she does best. And even more fortunate is the casting of newcomer Saoirse Ronan in this role. Ronan has since broken out with her Oscar nominated performance in "Atonement" (2007). "I Could Never Be You Woman" was her first feature film, which she easily steals. So much so that you are tempted to fast- forward through the scenes in which she is not present. Heckerling should have recognized what she had here and initiated major script revisions to amp up Ronan's screen time; especially more scenes of her playing off Paul Rudd (her mother's boyfriend) and Jon Lovitz (her father). Even so this will be become a minor cult classic on the strength of this one performance.

Michelle Pfeiffer and Paul Rudd (who played Cher's stepbrother in "Clueless") play the film's May-December romantic couple. Their chemistry is not bad and the romance is mostly played for its comic qualities. This stuff is good enough to keep and certainly not one of the film's fatal weaknesses. These can be found in some ill-conceived expressionistic elements: Tracey Ullman as an extremely boring Mother Nature, Fred Willard as an unfunny version of his Ron Albertson "Waiting for Guffman" (1996) character, and Sarah Alexander as a kind of concentration of all the irritating qualities of Jenny McCarthy. The one expressionistic element that does work is the "Head of the Class" style television show that Pfeiffer's character is producing; complete with tacky production design and middle age actors playing high school students.

The film might just be the highest-profile motion picture ever to take the direct-to-DVD route, due to bad financial practices rather than the marketability of the final product. Then again when you try to figure out the film's target audience you realize that it is even narrower than the standard "chick flick", and unlike Heckerling's hit films there is nothing here of interest to the teen demographic.

Rosie (Pfeiffer) is a middle age TV writer/producer whose once popular TV series needs a talent transfusion, and whose main occupation seems to be staying young. Adam (Rudd), a 28 year-old actor, is added to the cast and it is quickly apparent that he and Rosie are soul mates despite the age differential. Middle school daughter Izzie (Ronan) has a crush on a boy at her school and Rosie must adjust to her daughter growing up. As someone observed earlier, Izzie is a little like what "Juno" might have been four years before her pregnancy. Ronan's two songs (including a parody of Britney's "Oops" with altered lyrics) are the film's comedic highlights.

The DVD package is pretty basic; a few deleted scenes, the unused theatrical trailer, and an extremely lame commentary.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

DVD Review: Another Romantic Comedy ...Ho-Hum ...
Summary: 3 Stars

Romantic comedies abound, so I was hesitant to retry the genre with yet another film starring Michelle Pfeiffer. She seems to love the genre; not necessarily all comedy but definitely the romantic part. Ever since One Fine Day (1996) where she starred alongside the then and future heart-throb George Clooney (Michael Clayton), she's been consistently on the romance movie radar screen (that's been 12 years as of this review).

But Pfeiffer does an okay job once again as an aging screenwriter named Rosie, trying to keep her job, her sanity, and her teen daughter all from imploding. Circling around these troublesome times is Rosie's growing awareness of her age (mid-40s) and her lack of any new romantic prospects. Her "battle scenes" with her daughter's Ken and Barbie dolls are pretty darn funny, too, which also aided in the darker side of the comedic need to understand one's own age. Her daughter Izzie (Saoirse Ronan, Atonement) has just got her period and is full into what she believes to be womanhood. Rosie's daughter's blossoming adulthood triggers Rosie's own sense of love and she finds it in the unlikely arms of a much, much younger man/actor named Adam (Paul Rudd, Knocked Up).

Difficulties abound thanks to Rosie's passive-aggressive secretary Jeannie (Sarah Alexander) who does everything to thwart Rosie's possibilities at a love life; and thanks to Rosie's ex-husband Nathan (Jon Lovitz) who's always having some body part of his remade via plastic surgery. There's another "force" battling Rosie and it is Mother Nature herself (Tracey Ullman, Corpse Bride) come to life in the form of a nymph-like creature that talks to Rosie about the need to follow nature's path.

The Mother Nature portions of the story are undoubtedly the weakest and easily could've been tossed out without losing anything within the story of I COULD NEVER BE YOUR WOMAN.

The outlandish dancing and over-acting of Paul Rudd helped keep the story light and laugh-out-loud interesting. Even Lovitz was a bit of a surprise in that he helped move the storyline along with some decent comedic punch.

But if you're looking for anything new within the genre, you won't find it here. Which can be refreshingly simple for some, but irritatingly static to others.

DVD Review: If only it were possible to give zero stars
Summary: 1 Stars

What a dreadful piece of dross. Poorly written/directed/lit/acted and everything else. The excruciating post-Sex and the City smart-aleckery was just plain not funny.
And the usually watchable Rudd was the most irritating suitor since that Scottish bloke in Sliding Doors.
How does stuff like this get green-lit? What were they thinking?
Rom-com Hell!

DVD Review: Loved it, but want the Soundtrack
Summary: 5 Stars

This was a great movie and if you are girly you will love it too! The only thing is that there isn't a soundtrack released and well the daughter Izzy makes fun of several singers and makes her own version of their songs and it is hilarious!! It will make you want to have it on your ipod!

Description of I Could Never Be Your Woman

A romantic Comedy about a successful professional woman who runs into trouble in her love life when she meets a younger man.

I Could Never Be Your Woman is an Amy Heckerling film in the very best sense: very funny, culturally relevant, a little bitter and a little sweet. Heckerling's body of work is often labeled inconsistent: On the plus side, you have teen classics Fast Times at Ridgemont High and Clueless, both of which captured the '80s and '90s zeitgeists perfectly and were huge commercial and critical successes. On the other, more disappointing side, we find the Look Who's Talking trilogy and A Night at the Roxbury. After her last foray behind the camera, the mildly funny but pretty uninteresting film The Loser, Heckerling has come back with an extremely entertaining and likeable movie that has unfortunately been overshadowed by a lot of controversy regarding the film's release and studio politics. I Could Never Be Your Woman is a movie about Rosie, a divorced woman in her 40s (Michelle Pfeiffer) and the younger man she falls in love with (the perennially likeable Paul Rudd). It is also a movie about youth-obsessed Hollywood, celebrity culture, and the inevitability of aging. Rosie is the mother of a teenage daughter (Atonement's Saoirse Ronan) and struggles to raise her daughter apart from the warped narcissistic values of Hollywood, while being in a position of perpetuating those same values (Pfeiffer plays the creator and producer of a teen TV show). While the movie is otherwise a jumbled mess of themes and plot points, Heckerling succeeds in keeping it cohesive. With this A-list cast, Heckerling's strong pedigree, and a genuinely enjoyable script, this is a film that didn't deserve a straight-to-video-release. --Kira Canny

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