See Jane Date

See Jane Date
Charisma Carpenter, David Lipper, Linda Dano, Antonio Sabato jr.
Directed by Robert Berlinger
Made for TV 2003
Echo Bridge Home Entertainment 2006
90 minutes

See Jane Date is your basic but much better than usual chick flick romantic comedy DVD. This made for TV movie originally aired on ABC and is now available from Echo Bridge Home Entertainment. If you like chick flicks (movies where women talk a lot about men and meet a lot of losers before meeting Mr. Right) you are certainly going to enjoy See Jane Date. If you like romantic comedies, you are definitely going to like this one. This is not a ground-breaking, cinematic classic but it does what a nice little movie is supposed to do: entertain and make you laugh a few times. See Jane Date also manages to do this in a very original way.

See Jane Date is the story of Jane (Charisma Carpenter of Veronica Mars, Charmed, and Angel fame), a thirty something associate editor at a women’s magazine. She gets an invitation to a younger cousin’s wedding and has no “guest” to accompany her. She is also asked by her editor to help a former classmate turned minor celebrity work on her tell-all autobiography. Her big problem in life, however, is finding the male who will accompany her to the wedding, a task made even more difficult because she has started to talk about her imaginary boyfriend slash doctor to people she knows.

Unlike many made for TV movies, this is an original and witty comedy. The writing is full of subtle and funny bits of dialogue (“All the girls at work salivate over this guy!”  “Well, I hope he showers.”). In many ways, See Jane Date is also the cattiest romantic comedy I have seen in a while as all the characters seem to like taking a dig at plain (but cute) Jane and she is not above a few digs herself. It is also original because it subtly makes the point that Mr. Right does exist but women are unable to see him as such. Jane actually meets a nice guy who is exactly what she is looking for (David Lipper) but always fails to notice him, looking, instead, as is often the case, for some guy with a shining armor and killer job. A perfect example of that is when Jane is at a store where the bride registered: the salesman is the exact kind of guy she described as Mr. Right but she fails to pick up on that. Of course, none of the guys her friends set her up with are even close to being dating material.

What is refreshing about See Jane Date is it is not afraid to set up a situation, such as one of Jane’s blind dates, deliver the joke, and quickly move on. Too many movies make the scene last too long as if they were under some obligation to make a second banana actor earn his day’s pay with extra dialogue. This is a quick-paced movie that actually assumes the viewer is intelligent and gets the point or joke the first time around. The ending kind of disappointed me but it will probably please most viewers.

Look for Canadian stand-up comic Scott Faulconbridge in a cameo as the opera-loving and very energetic neighbor.

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