A CASE OF YOU (2013)

Genre: Comedy/Romance
Director: Kat Coiro
Cast: Justin Long, Evan Rachel Wood, Vince Vaughn, Sienna Miller, Brendan Fraser, Sam Rockwell, Peter Dinklage
RunTime: 1 hr 31 mins
Rating: NC16 (Some Coarse Language and Drug Use)
Released By: Cathay-Keris Films and InnoForm Media
Official Website: https://www.facebook.com/ThatAwkwardMomentMovie

Opening Day: 13 February 2014

Synopsis: Young writer Sam (Justin Long) has a crush on Birdie (Evan Rachel Wood), the cute and quirky barista at his local coffee shop. When his conventional attempts to woo her crash and burn, he takes his efforts online, creating a Facebook profile embellished with all of the details that would make him Birdie’s dream guy: ballroom dancing, rock climbing, a seemingly endless, escalating series of wacky and unlikely hobbies. When the harebrained scheme is a surprise success and Birdie falls for his exaggerated alter ego, Sam must keep up the act or lose his dream girl forever.

Movie Review: 

‘A Case of You’ makes a case of being yourself even while wooing the girl of your dreams. Starring Apple spokesgeek Justin Long and notable indie actress Evan Rachel Wood, it eschews the typical Hollywood rom-com in favour of a more understated indie feel, so those expecting big laughs and bigger emotional moments will likely be disappointed. And yet, those looking for a low-key charmer like ‘500 Days of Summer’ will also probably find this underwhelming, as Long’s first outing as a writer proves too perfunctory to make a lasting impression.

Long plays the mildly neurotic Sam, who makes a living authoring novelisations of trashy movies like Teen Vampire: Revenge of the Baldroozens. Sam likes a girl named Birdie (Wood) at his neighbourhood barista; unfortunately, Birdie is replaced by the suitably dour Gerard (Peter Dinklage) shortly after Sam gets to know her name. Nonetheless, with a certain modern-day tool called Facebook, Sam manages to track her down and find out just what she fancies in a guy - which in Sam’s case, happens to be a compendium of hobbies and interests like cooking, playing the guitar, rock climbing and Art appreciation.

And so begins Sam’s transformation into what he thinks is Birdie’s dream guy, learning judo, French cooking, ballroom dancing and how to strum Joan Baez on the guitar - the last of which sees an amusing cameo by ‘Moon’ star Sam Rockwell as his bitter guitar teacher. In addition to watching him endure the pain of being someone he obviously isn’t, Sam also gets some supporting comic relief in the form of his idiosyncratic roommate Eliot (Keir O’Donnell), whose penchant for masturbating to the pictures of mature Hollywood actresses like Carrie Fisher is one of the amusing - but overused - running jokes in the movie.

Directing from a script by Long, Christian Long and O’Donnell, Kat Coiro fails to find an engaging narrative rhythm with which to overcome the episodic nature of the writing. Each of Sam’s contortions doesn’t quite add up to a coherent whole at the end, which predictably ends up in a minor kerfuffle between Sam and Birdie just before the happily-ever-after finale. Indeed, even though it clocks in at slightly longer than one half hours, there is a certain lethargy to the entire affair, which pretty much means that you’ll be finding yourself checking your watch every once in a while.

On his part, Long is never less than affable in the role, though that in itself doesn’t make his character particularly interesting to watch. Wood takes a break from darker portraits to play his fantasy girl Birdie, but neither Long nor Wood share enough chemistry to convince you of something akin to a mutual attraction between them. In fact, it is the big-name supporting acts who end up stealing the show from either of them - besides those already mentioned, there’s Vince Vaughn as Long’s publisher and Brendan Fraser as Wood’s dilettante ex-boyfriend.

And so it is that ‘A Case of You’ never does make much of a compelling case why you should make it a case about it. It has a few amusing bits here and there, it strives for romantic, and it tells a noble lesson about how we should just be able to be ourselves next to our other halves; but the sum total of it hardly makes for anything consequential. It is ever so slight as a romance, a comedy or as a drama, and unless you really have one half hours of nothing else to do, make that time a case about something else, anything else instead. 

Movie Rating:

(Not nearly as funny, romantic or poignant as it should be, this wannabe indie rom-com never quite answers why you should make it a case of itself)

Review by Gabriel Chong