I liked "Manfast" quite a bit! I borrowed Mary's DVD for a while and watched it. Several times. It's not perfect but for its sheer cuteness and likeability it gets at least a 7 out of 10 for a score.
"Manfast" weaves the clever, if sometimes confusing tale of 5 women in Tallahassee Florida who conduct an interesting experiment for one girl's master's degree: Cut off all contact with the opposite sex for 100 days.
As one character put it, it would be easy "for a bunch of lesbians or nuns" but these girls are not lesbians or nuns. They are young women in their 20s, which in my opinion, is still in their formative years. Like the film "Some Girl", they are 20somethings who like to party and party they do. Hard!
Unlike "Some Girl" which I liked considerably less than "Manfast", the women in this flick are highly developed personalities and have important roles to each other. They are true friends who really seem to care about each other. The women in "Some" were shallow backbiters for the most part. Well at least the side characters were. Anyway, that's a film I'll review later.
The ladies in Tallahassee live in a quaint house together and each of them plays a key role in the publishing of a small post-feminist magazine called "Biotch". They have a modest local and perhaps interstate following, and they have interesting things to say about womanhood in the new millenium. Every so often they throw parties, for no good reason, and tons of people, male and female, flock to join them. The morning after, they usually wake up terribly sick and hungover, and sometimes in bed with guys they wouldn't have bedded if sober.
It is indeed like a new version of "Animal House", only it's girls who are looking to get laid, with no committment issues to contend with. At least that is so for Alex (Klea Scott), who is only looking for fun, not love. Taylor (Lala Sloatman), on the other hand, is more sensitive, and takes it personally when things go sour between herself and boyfriend Matt (Bojesse Christopher). Taylor's kid sister JJ (Jenny Judelle) is tormented by the fact that boyfriend Paul (Chad Slagle) has parents who don't like her, for the simple reason that she is not a sweet Southern debutante type. Their friend Kate (Kate Norby) is an aspiring musician, but right now she is reduced to doing nothing more than singing (more like moaning suggestively) co-lead for a mostly male jazz-swing band. Next door neighbor Jessica (Annabelle Gurwitch), who may or may not be a lesbian (hinted at more than once) is the one working for her degree. She doesn't really work for the Biotch 'zine, but she is one of many inspirations for it, undoubtedly providing plenty of ideas for writer/founder/editor-in-chief Taylor, artist/illustrator/cartoonist Alex, and printer/copyrighter JJ. Kate's role is mostly financial. Her dad is a very rich man who has given the magazine a substancial loan.
Now, a year later, he is asking when he will get a return. This sets up for the interesting and clever plot that will launch the event that gave the film its title.
The reason this one "chick flick" works so well, or should I say reasons plural, are the same reasons "Some Girl" was fun in many ways: good writing and some very nicely developed male characters to compliment the females. As I said before, "Some Girl" had a great many unlikeables in the vulva department, with the exception of sensitive, deep-hearted Claire and smarmy Jenn. It had great male characters played by Vanni Ribisi, Michael Rapaport, Adam Goldberg and of course Jeremy Sisto.
Chick flicks are not my favorite topic. Don't even get me started on "Moonlight and Valentino", a dismal, jaw-cracking yawn of a movie that had absolutely N-O likeable females. At all.
In "Manfast" the women are, again, highly developed. I didn't think that pretty Taylor (the main female) would be much more than a bitchy and conceited airhead but she is terrific. A great character. With a brain. I know it's terrible to say that, but we need more films where women are smart and serve as the main characters who have something on their minds (other than landing their man and shit). Alex is wickedly sexy and funny. JJ is kind of nerdy but in an adoreable way (she loves boy bands and wears hideous clothing at times). I didn't really care for Kate being portrayed as kind of light in the brainpan, but maybe she's supposed to be one of those blondes that you discover has some super-high IQ later on. Anyway, she's a sweet girl. The four of them, along with their friend Jessica, make each and every scene memorable and entertaining. Nobody's out to "get" anyone. Nobody's competing for a man. Rather than that, they are on the same team, in every situation. Real friends.
They don't turn into lesbians either. Like the women of "Sex In The City" they like their girly stuff. And they LOVE men. The manfast isn't about rejecting men from their lives. That's where the film falters a bit, making that clear. It's just an experiment in women's studies. Can women live without men? What if all the men in the world (God forbid, huh?) died out and only women were left? Could we fix our own cars? Could we unplug our own toilets? The rules are: no talking, flirting, touching or having sex with any man, for 100 days.
One thing the experiment does is temporarily cast aside the distraction of men. The four girls get to know each other and themselves. Sounds cliche, but it's done in a fun way. Alex learns to cast aside her feeling of rejection and understands that she is a great artist nevertheless. JJ learns that just because Paul's parents are jerks doesn't mean she has to kowtow to their ideals for "his perfect wife". Kate discovers she can not only sing but play guitar. Jessica learns that Professor Mason is a bitch lol. And Taylor? Well, she seems to be the one person who has everything together. Well, maybe not. She still hasn't quite learned to practice the idealist life she writes about so hopefully. You can't be a clear thinker after guzzling on Jack Daniels all night, and what are you hoping to accomplish having a drunken one-nighter with Kirk of all people, right?!
Kirk (Kirk Fox) doesn't like Taylor's reaction to him the morning after. Once the manfast begins and Taylor is no longer able to speak to him, he, along with many of the men in the film, takes it as some kind of slight against men, and sets out to ruin the experiment. If there are any "bitchy" characters, it is at least 2 or 3 of the men. "Manfast" has at least as many well-developed male characters, including the ones played by Fox, Slagle, Christopher, and Padraic Aubrey, Ethan Embrey and Kimo Wills, as "Some Girl" has. Embry's late nite TV personality is one of the "bitchy" ones, as well as the in-denial-about-being-bitter Matt. The bitchiest of all would have to be Kirk though. While Matt and Colin (Wills) playfully come up with little schemes to mess with JJ's head, Kirk plots a malicious revenge against Taylor and seriously tries to compromise her integrity and her friendships. I use the words "bitch" and "bitchy" not to describe females, but to describe spiteful, vengeful people. There's a difference between "bitch" and "biotch", remember.
This is the one film where you see Jeremy Sisto simply "being pretty". Like Mary said, his role is a very traditional "love interest" one (for lead character Taylor), usually designated for a female actor. He doesn't do any psycho stunts or scream and rant over anything. He is just "pretty" here. There's no better way to say it.
But don't worry, that doesn't mean he's boring. In fact, he is so attractive, so sexy, so tempting, that it's like the apple to Eve. What makes it even harder for Taylor is that he is just as gorgeous inside as he is outside. As Alex says, "Ooh la la!" Sisto's so incredibly beautiful in this movie that the other men (even Christopher or Slagle, the only 2 to come close) are somewhat gawky and nerdy in comparison. Actually, in one scene, they could have helped Sisto tidy up his hair! I know it's humid in Florida, but was it too much to ask?
The one scene that I almost criticized is the selfsame one that would be impossible not to happen with Sisto's magnetic character, a photographer named Mica, who has recently returned to hometown Tallahassee from New York: the flirting scene, and yes, it's definitely flirting (in my opinion). Taylor says not a word, but her body language and her playfulness...what is it if it's not flirting?
I could not criticize it however, because Taylor writes an article afterward, saying that if you know that sex cannot and will not follow, it is not flirting. That's Taylor's personal belief at least. And in Taylor's opinion, too, Jessica's rules were "murky" and allowed for certain situations. In short, while the women could learn to fix their own alternators and toilets, it was impossible to not communicate at all with men. For instance, Kirk, who works in the photo shop down the street: Taylor had to at least gesture to him about needing photos developed. The rule was, no talking, which we naturally take to mean, no speaking. There was no clear cut rule against any and all communication, and no communication at all is impossible in our world without offending someone in someway. So the cute scene between Mica and Taylor really didn't break any rules. To me it looked like flirting, but as Taylor says in the article, "Flirting is foreplay for sex."
It's not a perfect film, but it certainly isn't the mess some of the critics on the Internet Movie site have called it! It's fun! Give it a chance! Esp if you liked "Animal House" "American Pie" movies and even "Now You Know". It's a heck of a lot more fun than most "chick" flicks!
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