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Man About Town (2006) More at IMDbPro »

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36 comments in total

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33 out of 43 people found the following comment useful :-
Loved it..., 8 June 2006

Author: DoubleUK from Amsterdam, Netherlands

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

I find it strange to see an American movie, being released over here in The Netherlands, before it's release in the states. And why is it not released in th US? Because it's not good? Nope. This is a very good movie. I enjoyed it thoroughly. And the people present in the theater also did enjoyed it. Ben Affleck has a knack for comedy. He plays Jack Giamoro, heading a big agency for writers and actors in Hollywood. He is married to a beautiful woman (Nina, played by Rebecca Romijn) and takes care of his father, who needs attendance, suffering from a stroke. Jack secretly attends a course in writing journals in order to get grips with his life. The movie starts with Nina confessing that she has been unfaithful to him. Jack cannot cope with this, especially when he hears that she did it with one of his clients. He throws her out of the house and threatens to end the contract with his client, a very, very successful comedy writer and very important to the agency. What follows is the world of Jack falling apart, his colleagues and friends taking different sides. A rejected Chinese screenwriter tries to get back at him by exposing the fraudulent basis on which the agency is founded. A burglary, a really horrendous but funny dental job, John Cleese making easy money as a teacher and an audition of 'Basic Instinct'. It's all there and more.

This movie is at times funny, hilarious, touching but all the time convincing and engaging. I loved it. I don't know why it's not already in American cinemas. And if you had your doubts about Ben, see this flick. You won't regret it.

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17 out of 20 people found the following comment useful :-
I liked it but it's not a comedy, 9 November 2006

Author: mn_aqua from Netherlands

I liked the movie. Ben was funny and Rebecca Romijn lovely and very attractive. Both gave a mature performance, and the characters they portrayed were real and convincing. But the movie contained more drama than comedy. A few times I laughed, but overall this movie had a serious message about how to cope with people's imperfection (and your own). Psychological themed movies always are presented as comedy (hence the casting of John Cleese, the neurotic par example) but that's just to make it not too heavy. I liked the message of the movie though. All together the movie is a nice distraction, and some people may learn from it. Especially if you are a fan of Ben, this is a must-see.

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23 out of 32 people found the following comment useful :-
Excellent film, great performances all around, 9 November 2006

Author: TysynnTrace from Canada

Honestly this film surprised me. After sitting through Surviving Christmas I didn't think I'd give Affleck another chance. But he pulls off an exceptional performance here, nailing every emotional scene as well as comedic. The rest of the cast was great as well, with only Rebecca Romin turning in a so so performance.

Definitely check this out if you're into movies like American Beauty, where comedy and drama mesh well and create something poignant. Also, if you feel that you're at a point in your life where you have no clue what you're doing, check this film out. It'll help. You'll feel better.

9/10.

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34 out of 55 people found the following comment useful :-
Beautiful, 1 August 2006

Author: Blomst from Oslo, Norway

I really loved this movie. It's light although touching, it's funny but also sad, its comedy and drama, all at the same time. This gives me a rare opportunity to see a "feel good movie" that touches and fills me with spontaneous laughs. I don't like comedy's much, they often seem too easy to predict, and you know you are suppose to laugh. In this movie it comes naturally.

The acting was good, not magical, although the teacher was phenomenal… as always.

See this movie and forget your worries for an hour and a half.

Enjoy!!!

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15 out of 23 people found the following comment useful :-
A very rounded film: Jersey Girl for grown-ups, 5 November 2006

Author: intelearts from the big screen

Stress and Success: I believe that "Man About Town" gets to the soul of work-life balance in a surprising way. A head review on IMDb compares it to American Beauty -- I think this makes it too heavy and the themes too weighty -- it is Jersey Girl with grown-ups - has farce, charm, and truly poignant scenes, as well as a man who as his life goes down the toilet makes his soul play and work for him.

Is it about the material waste vs. romance? : well, no not really; a modern parable of values; a little; an Italian drama with American values played out like a french comedy romance: definitely.

There is a strong cast: A pythonesque cameo breaks up the story into segments. Howard Hesseman as the father is a better role than expected: and he delivers a class performance. A face I hadn't noticed before, Damien Wayans, (well according to IMDb his previous credits include "cousin carrying plastic bag" in Don't be a Menace to South Central while Drinking Your Juice in the Hood, 'nuff said...) here he handles the foil of Ben Affleck's necessarily flack-like performance with real aplomb as the put-upon PA. He has behind the fluff a serious look that would lend well to comedy and/or drama. Bet we'll see more of him.

The treatment lends to being real handled with verve and vigor: covering the gamut from farce to bathos - and for my money hit a surprising number of home runs. Ben Affleck - a man driven to the point of desperation, and reconnection gives a deceptively light performance: I would have to say they are some awesome skills going into this - sometime he makes it look too easy, too, what's the word, smiley ?, but it is nicely played. It is his most mature role to date and he handles this tale of a man discovering his true values and maturity with a measured casualness.

On filming: I found the approach to filming itself more complex than I expected the lighting and sound are both clever and discrete; and it is well lit. Obviously style and architecture and the LA dream are nicely displayed: great design. The office really looks right, down to the door handles.

The editing makes good sense and keeps the pace in a natural story that jumps pace and genre : and there are some shots with lifts that are unique (!) and worth checking out for that reason alone.

It is funny particularly good on the visual jokes, but not overly crude, but It also moved me to tears four times - no mean feat - and my wife even more.

Mike Binder, who both wrote and directed this, is getting really close to having a real hit - I sense a director ready to take on a big star, and big themes and fly with them.

Overall, I enjoyed this tremendously and would say: more like it please. It is kind of familiar territory and many critics will point to it as too mixed up to be clear: but I would argue that the theme of redemption is clearer than the lax comic relief that occasionally surfaces -- and the silliness is light relief and flows out of the plot.

This film about a film executive who caught the success train early and now feels the baggage carriage rocketing up fast could itself be difficult to categorize as comedy romance drama etc; and that may be a weakness in marketing, but it is a strength in the telling: I found it a very rounded experience. Who wouldn't want to find films that touch the soul and here we have.

Worth the rental (And a release - This should be a release with real marketing values - right?) -- yup and how.

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4 out of 5 people found the following comment useful :-
Awful TV-Grade tripe, 3 October 2007

Author: John Holden from United States

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

As an actor Mike Binder isn't much. But at a director he rides the crest of sappiness and uses only what he can borrow from the well of older movies. I've never seen a writer-director so incapable of coming up with something new. At best he's a mediocre TV director.

"Man about Town" is about a guy who works too much and eventually learns that he needs to spend time with his family. Woo, there's a plot. Affleck, normally decent, sleepwalks through the role. Romjin, normally hot and exciting, is listless and dull. The rest of the cast are throwaways (except Hesse, who could have had more screen time)..

But it's the story - or lack thereof - that makes this a waste. There's no real explanation of anyone's motives and you never really find anything out. The story builds to various climaxes which are suddenly diffused in order to continue towards the end - as if the director was ready to resolve something but needed more time. Nasty violence happens out of the blue and out of character.

The point seems to be to get Affleck to realize that he loves his wife and can forgive her adultery. Along the way comic relief is offered grade-B 1950s style: people standing in corners have doors slammed in their faces; phone conversations happen where A is talking to B but C thinks A is talking to him so; characters yell and posture about things that come into their heads separate from any storyline ......

Presumably Binder had a sense of all this and so resorts to the laziest trick: it's narrated throughout. You can't follow it anyway but if you fast-forward (as you want to) you lose any possible sense of continuity that the worthless narration (Affleck reading his journal) might give.

All in all, a complete waste of time: no laughs, no love, no drama, no eurekas. Nada.

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6 out of 9 people found the following comment useful :-
Diary of an stressed man, 13 January 2007

Author: Matias Fernando (mattwargam@yahoo.com.ar) from Argentina

Sometimes the business world makes your love frozen. In a society where the prestige and the money seems to be more important than relationships, "trust" becomes just another word of the dictionary. Stress takes the control of your life; and without warning you stop living, to start acting in automatic pilot. And that is the case of Jack Giamoro (Ben Affleck) a well recognized and very successful executive in the Hollywood industry; who in his routine tries to find safety in isolating himself. His ammo ironically turns into his wickedness when everything starts falling apart, and he decides to write his personal diary. His life, his pain, his loneliness and secrets in paper, put him in danger when someone steals his written memories. A good romantic comedy, with the excellent performance of John "the actor" Cleese and the always beautiful Rebecca Romijn. It makes you laugh, it makes you fall in love, it makes you stop and look around. What's important in life? I say: A great choice for a date.

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8 out of 13 people found the following comment useful :-
Romantic Comedy?, 18 August 2007

Author: kenneth-r-close-1 from United States

This movie was advertised as a romantic comedy, but there was no romance and no comedy. All I saw was a boring story about a horrible person, a talent agent, whom I found myself rooting against. Talent agents are, in general, not likable characters. So why did the director think we'd enjoy spending a few hours with one, even if he's played by Ben Affleck? The nepotism and shallow nature of Hollywood seem to be accurately portrayed in this movie. Behind the red carpet glamour of the movie industry lies a dirty business totally lacking any morals or ethical standard. But this was well documented in "The Player" and doesn't need to be repeated. I couldn't bring myself to care about Affleck's character, and thus didn't get emotionally involved with this movie.

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2 out of 2 people found the following comment useful :-
The talent agency, 19 April 2008

Author: jotix100 from New York

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

"Man About Town", written and directed, as well as acted, by Mike Binder, shows how low some of the people that rule the film industry have stooped so low in order to establish themselves in the fantasy planet of Hollywood and the competitive world they seem to inhabit. Some famous names come to mind of people that got their start this way. It is curious how our society does not bat an eyelash to denounce their deception, their greed and the ambition that seem to be their only excuse to justify their existence.

At the center of the story, one meets Jack Giamoro. He lives the kind of life that not many of us mortals get to know. He is married to a gorgeous woman, a product of that rarefied world, that has cheated on him with one of his clients. Jack, upon learning about the deceit in his own life, goes berserk. He hires the relative of a man in his office to take all her possessions out his house and his life.

We get a chance to see what Jack's life was like growing up. In flashbacks one can watch how his own brother took the girl he liked away from him. His father, who is senile, lives with him, to make matters worse. Luckily, Jack has no children, which makes his separation from the wife more bearable. Jack has a problem in opening himself to others as shown in the writing classes he decides to take, but he wants to use to his own advantage; he doesn't want to share personal aspects of his writing with the professor, or his fellow students.

The surprising turn of events that befall Jack make him more human, in ways one never suspected. In a way, the film is a cop out because Jack doesn't show any kind of human kindness from the way he rose to the top, or in the way he wants to leave the same privilege life he got to enjoy when he stole business secrets from his employer and enabled him to have an upper hand on the others.

The problem with the film is we never really cared about these people and their insignificant troubles. Mike Binder, who created this film knows first hand how that segment of the film population acts and gives the viewer a bird's eye view of the shallowness of it all.

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7 out of 12 people found the following comment useful :-
Waste of time, 21 January 2007

Author: ladygee2001 from United Kingdom

*** This comment may contain spoilers ***

Well this movie is simply - a waste of time. I only watched it because the reviewer before me said there was comedy in here, but I failed to spot anything, and I mean anything funny - at all. I don't know about you, but I don't really find cheating funny, or a medical stroke, or a car crash, or GBH, and apart from a bad tooth job joke which was on a level of a 3 year old knock knock joke, there was nothing to be called this movie "comedy" about.

As for the "drama" - despite all the above mentioned, I wouldn't even classify this as a drama, its hard to explain unless you see the movie, but all the above bad stuff has been dealt with in the movie so terribly, that you don't even get to feel for the guy, or the girl, or pretty much anyone. And if there is no feelings developed for any of the characters, there is no drama when something happen to them. In fact, the remote sadness I felt was for the 2 second car crash, which was so understated, that you really had no chance to develop even a tear.

The story was so badly written, that if you asked me what was the movie about - it was about a (badly written) journal really. The story was, boring and shallow, with ludicrous action points, and final that makes you say "What the...?"

So, a "Feel good movie"? I'm actually feeling very angry now at wasting 1.5 hrs of my life on this. And to top it all it did not help that narrator was Ben's monotonous "I don't care about anything including this movie" voice.

So all I can say is, I'm off to watch some Lee Evans. Now THAT's a "comedy", full of action, passion and feelings: all that this movie - IS NOT!

PASS!

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