You know the very first review ever I wrote for this site was a Donald Petrie (How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, Miss Congeniality) movie, the inexplicably painful Welcome To Mooseport. And two years later, Petrie does not fail to disappoint, delivering an even more painful, torturous, and execrable comedy.

This time it’s a romantic one starring teen it-girl Lindsay Lohan as public relations secretary Ashley Albright. It’s set up so we see Ashley’s ridiculously good luck, juxtaposed with Jake Hardin (Pine), who has nothing but bad luck. So ultimately their paths must cross and they will have the much predictable REVERSAL OF FORTUNES!!! Yes it’s that kind of comedy. The ol’ switcheroo where the two main characters lives are turned upside down. A lot of these movies were made in the ’80s. The difference is they were actually pretty good. Trading Places this is not.

So yeah, Jake’s a fucking clod and an embarrassment and he can’t hook McFly, a British band he wants to rep, up to a gig. But at a masquerade ball that he sneaks into, disguised as a hired dancer, he gets to dance with Ashley and they kiss. Now young people, do you do that a lot, just kissy kissy, smoochy smoochy with people you don’t know while you are generally sober at a party? So due to the twinkle soundtrack, and after suddenly becoming clumsy, Ashley has lost her luck and given it to Jake. Ashley’s life gets flushed down the toilet and things start happening for Jake immediately.

After a soothsayer who saw this in tarot cards and tried to warn Ashley lets her know the score, Ashley realizes she has to kiss Jake to magically get her luck back. Problem: She doesn’t know who Jake is. So she goes around town kissing all the dancers hired to work at the masquerade ball in order to get her luck back. You’d have to be a blind fucking dumb-shit idiot not to recognize Ashley, seeing as how she wasn’t even wearing a mask at the party. But instead of just asking the dancers if they remember kissing her at the masquerade party they worked, she goes up to them and kisses them and scratches a lottery ticket to see if she gets her luck back. I hate this writing, what kind of writing is this?

You want another example of the horrid writing in this movie? Ashley, after losing her luck, asks her friend, Dana (Turner), her horoscope. And Dana replies with, “Your moon is in Uranus.” Yes folks, a Uranus joke. It’s so funny and hilarious that the writers can think of a biting and brilliant joke as that in which they say Uranus. Yup, that PG-13 rating sure is edgy because you can say things like Uranus! URANUS! URANUS! URANUS! YOUR ANUS! There I said your anus! What are you going to do to me now Hollywood! Arrest me for saying your anus instead of Uranus?!

Of course Jake and Ashley’s paths cross again, and there are more switches, and you should be able to figure out how this movie ends, but because I could care less about ruining it, I’ll give a little hint. The final scene is a “romantic” one that takes place at Central Station. It was so romantic I wanted to puke.

I’m also sick of the music for these crappy movies. You know what I’m talking about. The musical score for a movie that has lots of piano key notes, it sounds like twinkling. Movies still have musical scores like this.

Lohan? What can I say, she can’t carry a film. She doesn’t have any gravitas or presence. All she has nowadays is her cleavage, which she has no problem with flaunting here. Pine? I found his character embarrassing, more pathetic than sympathetic.

This movie is simply more proof that Hollywood can’t make quality romantic comedies any more. This is just high-concept trash.

—Jeffrey “The Vile One” Harris