Hairshirt (1998)

Director:

Dean Paraskevopoulos

Writers:

Katie Wright (story) &
Dean Paraskevopoulos (story) ...

Genre:

Comedy | Romance

Plot:

A self-obsessed man runs through one woman after another in this screwball comedy. One of his rejected...

Plot Keywords:

Roommate | Screen Writing | Best Friend | Lollipop | Bar

Awards:

1 win

Cast

Dean Paraskevopoulos	...	Danny Reilly (as Dean Paras)
Chris Hogan	...	Male Casting Agent #1
Evan Glenn	...	Young Danny Reilly
Louise Devar	...	Young Peter Angelo
Leelee Groome	...	Teacher
Stephanie Sotomayer	...	Young Girl on Couch
Adriana Morera	...	Lynn Wallbanger
Casey Kretzmer	...	Tina Verussi
Lindy Ransom	...	Hollywood Girl #1
Lauren S. Wood	...	Hollywood Girl #2
Jen Simmons	...	Hollywood Girl #3
Nate Tuck	...	Jean Luc Weber
Victoria Trilling	...	Model at Jones
Neve Campbell	...	Renée Weber
Leah Diamond	...	Girl with Legs

Also Known As:

Too Smooth (USA) (reissue title)

MPAA:

Rated R for language.

Runtime:

Canada:91 min | USA:89 min

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Color

Certification:

Iceland:L | South Korea:15 | Germany:12 | USA:R | Netherlands:Unrated

Filming Locations:

Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, USA

Company:

Lunatic Productions

Goofs:

Revealing mistakes: When Corey leaves a message on Tim's answering machine, the machine display indicates that there are no messages (Messages 00)

Movie Connections:

References To Live and Die in L.A. (1985)

Soundtrack:

The Apple

Fair try, enjoyable movie

The movie is like a short-story, almost like an episode in a standard romantic/funny series. One episode is described, very few characters.

The plot is about a guy who is stuck in his old tricks when he really falls in love with a girl. You can guess the rest of the story from that sentence.

Some reviews I have read tells this is a guy sweet-talking a girl to a one-night stand, and afterwards falling in love (the standard story). But I like to take what happened in the beginning as "a fact", a girl meets a boy, they are interested in each others, the boys character and history complicates the situation.

So, it is not really a very complicated or enriching or anything, but it is a fair try to make a romantic movie.

Most of the main characters are built good enough. Both Danny (Dean Paras) and Peter Angelo (David DeLuise), along with other people from Danny's past are described through a look-back which works. They both play their roles well. Tim (Stefan Brogren) is presented as a mix between a heterosexual gay person, a strange artist, a looser and an a**hole. He is a bit too weird. Corey (Katie Wright) is an adorable "normal girl", by other reviews accused of being naive - but she isn't really.

Renee Weber (Neve Campbell) is a former girlfriend which Danny tricked in high-school, and she is obsessed with that still. I think Neve Campbell is playing badly in this movie. Her character is much less believable than the others. Jennifer (Rebecca Gayheart) is the most shallow character, I think it is not the actor as much as a problem with the script that makes her performance feel bad.

The progress of the film is fair enough. It starts with the background stuff, continues with a romantic sequence where the characters shows themselves, and sort of climaxes just before the end, after interference plots has played their part to affect the outcome of the film.

So, if you want to see a movie played well enough, at least as good as a standard TV-series, with a beginning and an end, with a romantic and somewhat complicated story which makes you feel good at the end - this movie should work for you.

I recently saw the 2002 version of The Count of Monte Cristo - a film where the filmmakers has destroyed a moderate story by making the last half of the movie a dull listing of on who (not even how) the Count takes his revenge (and of course a stupid happy ending), and saw that it has a 7.5/10 user rating.

This movie does not try to pretend to be much more than it is, and it certainly is a better movie than that movie. I don't feel like give it 7.5, but in its class I feel it deserves 6/10.