A humorous exploration of dating angst in the 1990s, COURTING COURTNEY is a pleasant but uninspired comedy that would have benefited from snappier dialogue.
Filmmaker Nick Hastings (Dana Gould) secures the permission of his best friend Courtney Baker (Eliza Coyle) to chronicle her romantic travails as she approaches her 30th birthday. Suppressing his own long-standing crush on her, Nick films Courtney in tandem with assorted heartbreakers like her
non- committal lover Al (Sean Masterson), dating service candidates like bilious Barney (Doug McKeon), and Dr. Phelps (Taylor Negron), the lecherous moderator of her women's group.
Along the cinema-verite way to finding Courtney the perfect mate, Nick experiences his share of dating disasters. Courtney is devastated when Al unexpectedly dumps her to marry someone else. Love takes an unexpected corkscrew turn after Nick and Courtney drown their sorrows in booze and end up in
bed together.
With their platonic friendship bollixed up, Courtney runs for cover; Nick becomes angry when she refuses to take his feelings for her seriously. By the time Nick swallows his pride and throws a surprise birthday party for Courtney, she has reconsidered her stance. Instead of filming others
courting Courtney, Nick finally becomes her leading man.
Sunny cameos by comedians Kathy Griffin, Ryan Stiles, and Julia Sweeney can't compensate for COURTING COURTNEY's essential lightness of being. Though this happy-go-lucky fable sails by agreeably enough, director-writer Paul Tarantino is no Albert Brooks or Woody Allen. He sticks to easy targets
and doesn't milk them for any subsidiary irony; you've experienced every pithy observation in similar, but funnier, romantic comedies. Nor is this satire on 90s dating sensibilities helped by the nondescript leads; in terms of white-bread blandness, Courtney and Nick are perfect for each other.
Cute and cuddly, COURTING COURTNEY covers the battle of the sexes with unsurprising exactitude. (Profanity, sexual situations, substance abuse.)
