In SHE’S THE ONE, writer/director/actor Edward Burns tries to recapture some of the indie charm that was bestowed on his inaugural film THE BROTHERS MCMULLEN. And even though it’s written adequately and displays a few decent performances, it just doesn’t explore enough new territory to differentiate it from Burns’ first effort.
Burns plays Mickey Fitzpatrick, a New York taxicab driver who has gone through a heart wrenching breakup with his ex-fiancée Heather, played by Cameron Diaz (THE MASK). When an art student named Hope (Maxine Bahns, THE BROTHERS MCMULLEN) jumps into Mickey’s cab, his life is turned upside down as the two end up married only 24 hours later. Mickey’s family is not too happy to hear about this, especially his younger brother Francis (Michael McGlone, THE BROTHERS MCMULLEN) who has his own relationship drama to deal with trying to balance time between his wife Renee (Jennifer Aniston, FRIENDS) and his mistress Heather, the same Heather that was once engaged to his brother Mickey.
The plot sounds convoluted, but it’s actually not. While the dialogue is smart, the premise suffers from trying way too hard to create some sort of complicated and contrived scenario that ends up being neither. Instead it’s just a lot of complaining, some of it very funny, but for the most part it conveys the characters as arrogant and makes it hard for the audience to have any real connection with them or even sympathize with their struggles.
Where SHE’S THE ONE does succeed, is in completely failing to follow the standard formula of a romantic comedy. The plot plays out like a bunch of random sequences from someone’s life, which does give it more of a realistic tone, but at the same time also projects a disjointed story and lack of coherency between characters and their, albeit very weak, story arcs.
Stealing the spotlight every time he was on screen is John Mahoney (FRASIER) as the patriarch of the Fitzpatricks, whose wisdom that he bestows includes two fists as the solution to any argument. Burns, McGlone and Bahns play very similar style characters to their “McMullen” counterparts and Jennifer Aniston, who was still in the middle of her television career, had not yet evolved into a leading actor. However, Cameron Diaz did exhibit a very believable toughness and reserve that had been rarely seen in someone with such an innocent and flawless exterior, something that she would be able to make great use of in later films.
SHE’S THE ONE is an overall disappointing 2nd round effort from Burns. Coming off THE BROTHERS MCMULLEN, it was very transparent that he was simply trying to repackage that film with a larger budget. There was an opportunity for this script to take advantage of the irreverent style in which the story begins, but instead it comes all the way back down to Earth, perhaps even too much, making some of the more memorable, early moments in the film seem like they were out of place with a darker comedy outline that may have actually fared better in a film with lighter tones.
Video: 1.85:1 Widescreen, 1080p/AVC MPEG-4, This “Filmmakers Signature Series” disc supposedly has an all new transfer from the source material, but it certainly does not look like it. There is an awful lot of digital noise in here that goes way beyond artistic preference. The color and picture remain constant without any specks or pops that would be noticeable enough to point out.
Audio: English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0, Much like the video, the audio has some digital noise as well. Sometimes dialogue can sound a little tinny and can get lost in lower registers.
Commentary with Writer/Director/Star Ed Burns: Edward Burns explains how filming this script was different than his previous project due to working with a big studio and studio money. He does pause for a while at certain points and tends to ramble a bit, but overall there’s enough interesting information to make it worth a listen.
Featurette (8 min): A behind the scenes feature that is so bad, they didn’t even bother to give it a proper title.
Music Video (6 min): The song “Walls” performed by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.
Theatrical Trailer
