ron livingston, what have you done with your career? nooo!

for my birthday, i wanted a nice, quiet night watching a movie with my boyfriend. of course, i managed to persuade him to rent a “chick flick” starring brittany murphy. actually, i wanted to rent the film more for ron livingston, but what sucked was that he was only in it for a grand total of fifteen minutes — fifteen minutes of sanity in two hours of pure female lunacy.

little black book attempts to play on the endearing idiosyncracies of an insecure, single female character, a move bridget jones’s diary carried out successfully. this american attempt at providing an awkward, uncertain heroine falls flat on its face. first of all, the backdrop of this movie is a jerry springer-type television show that stacy works at, while on her way to becoming the next diane sawyer. is this supposed to be funny or ironic? either way, it does not work. secondly, you don’t feel for either of the main characters: stacy, the neurotic spy, or her boyfriend derek, the duplicitous jerk.

the ending was just plain terrible. how much can you resolve in a setting of the “kippie kann show”, where audience members are constantly cheering or booing every time someone hurls an insult. this doesn’t do anything for effect and ultimately destroys any real emotion that the film attempts to convey. and the carly simon bit? completely ridiculous.