This is a bit of a copy of 1964's Never Put It In Writing, where someone hastily expresses sentiments in a letter they later wish to withdraw. In both cases a caper-type chase ensues with the hapless stars trying to beat the delivery of the letter. This time, the package is sent by courier rather than mail, so there is much amusement with a comical courier, dedicated to getting the delivery to the recipient on time. In this case, The hero thinks he has evidence his wife has been unfaithful and posts her a disgusting package including a 'bye-bye' letter and a condom. He then has reason to doubt his asumption and chases the package all over America, encountering a serial killer the Grand Canyon on the way.
Reese Witherspoon is sexy and funny, just what we need for a romantic comedy of this type. Paul Rudd makes for a non-threatening good guy who never (usually) gets the girl and half the fun of the movie is not seeing whether the package will be delivered, or whether Reese & Paul will get together, but how it will happen.
A good one to watch on a rainy Saturday.
Watchable for Witherspoon
It's rarely a good sign when a movie is released straight to video, but it's infinitely worse when the main character's name just happens to be...Wyatt Trips (only in the movies, my friends, only in the movies).
An appealing cast is mostly wasted in this entertaining, but lightweight and predictable bit of fluff. Paul Rudd, who has done fine work elsewhere (Clueless, The Object of My Affection) is way over-the-top way too often and should have been hemmed in more by director Jason Bloom (Bio-Dome). Rudd plays Trips, a college student who sends his old high school sweetheart a hate note when he finds out she's been cheating on him. When she manages to convince him otherwise, he decides to intercept the letter, which just happens to have been sent--are you sitting down?--by overnight delivery.
Christine Taylor (The Brady Bunch Movie) as Trips' girlfriend Kimberly and the always-watchable Reese Witherspoon as Ivy, a fellow student (and exotic dancer) who offers to drive Trips cross-country to Kimberly's college, emerge relatively unscathed. In Taylor's case, it's because she only appears at the beginning and the end of the movie; in Witherspoon's, it's because her character is simply a lot less silly (and more believable) than Rudd's--although she does perform a striptease and engage in a couple of other fairly demeaning acts.
More than anything, Overnight Delivery resembles one of those John Cusack vehicles from the 1980s like The Sure Thing or Say Anything. If you've already seen those movies (along with John Hughes' entire output from the same era) and if you're a really big Reese Witherspoon fan...well, it may just keep you mildly entertained for 87 minutes. And that's more than can be said for some romantic comedies--especially those overly complicated two-hour affairs that really only have 87 minutes worth of story to tell. Plus, you'll get to see what Witherspoon looks like with short dark hair: Robin Tunney (The Craft).
It's the 1996 Road Trip
If you enjoyed the movie "Road Trip" then head back to the video store and check out the movie that made that one possible. "Overnight Delivery" throws Paul Rudd and Reese Witherspoon together in a hilarous domino effect of events that only get funnier along the way. The ending is probably what you would expect it to be seeing as it IS a romantic comedy but working your way to the end is the best part of the movie!
Director Diane Keaton brings a tender touch to Wildflower, a Lifetime cable-TV movie showcasing early-career excellence from Reese Witherspoon and Patricia Arquette. Witherspoon's big-screen debut in The Man in the Moon had premiered shortly before this movie's original broadcast in 1991, and a year earlier, Arquette had starred in a Keaton-directed CBS Schoolbreak Special, The Boy with the Crazy Brother. These rising talents are well served by Sara Flanigan's teleplay, closely adapted from her popular juvenile novel Alice. Set in the mid-1930s, the story follows two compassionate teens (Witherspoon, William McNamara) who discover and essentially adopt a partially deaf epileptic (Arquette) who'd been locked away by her psychotically abusive father. Beau Bridges... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Diane Keaton DVD Release Date: Released the 21 January 2003 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Brittany Murphy uses her ditzy/sexy combination to maximum effect in Uptown Girls. Molly Gunn (Murphy) is an heiress living off the estate of her dead rock star father--until an unscrupulous accountant embezzles everything and Molly has to get a job. After a failed attempt at retail work, Molly finds herself as the nanny for a prematurely humorless and rigid little girl named Ray (Dakota Fanning, I Am Sam), whose music mogul mother Roma (Heather Locklear) hardly ever sees her. Meanwhile, Molly woos an English musician who's trying to get a record contract from Roma. Unsurprisingly, Ray teaches Molly to take some responsibility for herself, while Molly gives Ray the opportunity to become the child she is--but despite the formulaic quality of the story, the two actresses play... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Brittany Murphy - Dakota Fanning - Jesse Spencer - Heather Locklear Director(s): Boaz Yakin DVD Release Date: Released the 06 January 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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With generous amounts of good luck and good timing, 50 First Dates set an all-time box-office record for the opening weekend of a romantic comedy; whether it deserved such a bonanza is another issue altogether. It's a sweet-natured vehicle for sweet-natured stars Adam Sandler and Drew Barrymore, and their track record with The Wedding Singer no doubt factors in its lowbrow appeal. But while the well-matched lovebirds wrestle with a gimmicky plot (she has no short-term memory, so he has to treat every encounter as their first), director Peter Segal (who directed Sandler in Anger Management) ignores the intriguing potential of their predicament (think Memento meets Groundhog Day) and peppers the proceedings with the kind of juvenile humor that Sandler fans... More Info about this DVD Director(s): Peter Segal DVD Release Date: Released the 15 June 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Opposites are forced to attract in Along Came Polly, a dose of featherweight fluff that could've been better and could've been worse--surely no pairing of Ben Stiller and Jennifer Aniston can be a complete waste of time, right? Faint praise indeed, but fans of these mainstream funny-folk will enjoy this movie as a lazy-weekend distraction. Ben's a newlywed insurance risk-assessment analyst whose wife (Debra Messing, in a throwaway role) betrays him on their honeymoon. His uptight, play-it-safe lifestyle (which includes acute aversion to germs and irritable bowel syndrome) makes him seemingly incompatible with the spontaneous, free-spirited Polly (Aniston), but writer-director John Hamburg (whose writing credits include the previous Stiller hits Meet the Parents and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ben Stiller - Jennifer Aniston - Philip Seymour Hoffman - Debra Messing - Alec Baldwin Director(s): John Hamburg DVD Release Date: Released the 08 June 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Anyone who's lived in an apartment will understand the mounting frustration of Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore as they grapple with the upstairs neighbor of their worst nightmares in Duplex, directed by Danny DeVito. Stiller and Barrymore play a young couple who think they've found the home of their dreams when they buy an astonishingly spacious Brooklyn duplex. Unfortunately, the second floor comes with a tenant, a seemingly sweet little old lady (Eileen Essell). Her petty demands and manipulative ways drive Stiller and Barrymore to desperate attempts to oust her--and when she breezily resists their worst efforts, the hapless pair begin to consider more serious (and final) measures. Duplex might be called a comedy of anxiety; it constantly pricks at your expectations of... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Ben Stiller - Drew Barrymore - Eileen Essell Director(s): Danny DeVito DVD Release Date: Released the 02 March 2004 Usually ships in 24 hours
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