Ben O’Shea: A Collective Of Dudes That Help Each Other

Ben O’Shea phoned in to review Splitsville, a new romantic comedy with vibes of Wes Anderson before things got quirky, and Woody Allen before the controversy. Ben reminisced on the all the great rom-coms of yesteryear when rom-coms were box office gold, so how does Splitsville stack up? And what score did Ben give it? Stay tuned.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Great per flick with Ben Shay. Good morning, morning, Ben,
Good morning. I would never lose your numbers the absolute
top of my contact free style. Whenever there's a movie
that needs to be reviewed, there I am. And today
it's Splitsville that needs reviewing. Was it a good review?
Was it was it a happy review? Was it worth

(00:22):
the review? Well, well, let's let's unpack it. So once
upon a time you couldn't go to a multiplex without
encountering dozens of rom coms. You know, it was this
much maligned genre, but people loved it. It generates a
lot of money at the box office every year, you know,
films with your Meg Ryan's and your Tom hanks is
and your Matthew mcconaugheyes, and then more recently your Rachel

(00:44):
McAdams and your cats Are and heigels. So many of
these movies. Not all of them were good. To be honest,
most of them were not good. And two serious film
critics like myself, we probably you know, really dismissed the genre.
But in the last couple of years they really have
gone the way of the dodo. They are now an

(01:05):
endangered species. Really, ever since the pandemic, they haven't bounced
back since since COVID, because I think people realize that
you can watch these movies at home, on the couch,
on your streaming platform. You probably don't need to pay
twenty five bucks a ticket to go and see them
at the movie And the sad thing about it, and
it's sad for society honestly that instead of you know,

(01:26):
a date night at the cinema, now it's just Netflix
and chill. That's that's where we're at as a society.
And it makes me a bit sad. But lately we
have seen a little bit of a resurgence. We saw
The Materialists, which we spoke about like a month or
so ago with d Coda Johnsons. Now the Coata Johnson's
back in another one's She's the New you know, sort

(01:47):
of Jalo or Catherine Heigel I think, or Kate Hudson
the event. She's an interesting case to Coda Johnson because
it's she. She Everyone seems to like her, but maybe
people don't really love her as an actress. But but she,

(02:09):
but she she does a good job in this film.
It's basically about two married couples who are going through
some issues in one In one case, it's you know,
this nice bloke Carrie, who's sweet, good natured, bit naive
maybe on a road trip with his wife Ashley, and
Ashley turns to him and says, you know what, actually

(02:30):
I want a divorce. And he's like, oh, you know
what's going on? Is there anything we can fix? And
she's like, you know, like I just I just want
my life to be a bit more adventurous in the
in the boudoir, and I don't think you're the guy
for the job, which is you know, no, no bloke
wants to hear that. Let's be honest, and he so
he looks for He looks for a shoulder to cry
on with his best mate Paul and his wife Julie,

(02:53):
who's played by Dakota Johnson. Finds out that they have
an open marriage, and he thinks to himself, maybe this
is the solution. It goes back to his wife and says, look,
let's try. Let's try an open relationship, and then allows
her to take lovers into their apartment. He then befriends
these lovers after she has even kicked them to the curb,
so ends up with this whole whole collection of blokes

(03:14):
hanging out at the house. One's a car practor one's
a life coach, one is a bartender, and they all
sort of form this little collective of dudes who help
each other. And so which is which is where the
comedy comes in, I guess. But this is not one
for the school holidays, right, just just checking take the kids. Look,
it's pretty, it's pretty tame. There's some colorful language, like

(03:36):
styl Oh you'd have some oh yeah, I think. Look,
I think some couples will go see this and might
have some explaining to do. But it's stylistically probably like
maybe an early Where's Andersen or you know, before he
got a bit weird, or maybe early Woody Allen before
he got too canceled. And so that's probably where this

(03:56):
film lands. And it's a it's a sort of a
rom com line. We used to get a lot of. Yeah,
you know, it's it's a bit it's a bit fraud
comparing anybody to Wooly Allen these days, let's be honest. Yeah,
but so yeah, I think I think fans of those
rom coms of like sort of the mid naughties, I
think we'll get something out of this one for sure.
All Right, Well, how many keys in a bowl? A you're

(04:18):
giving it? Well, it's honestly like rom coms. You know,
this was back in the mid naughties. It's probably two stars.
But because I haven't seen any of these genre for
so long, I feel really good about it. So I'm
going to give it three and a half. All right,
three keys and one broken one all right in the bowl?

(04:41):
All right? Let make sure you grab the right set
of keys. Yes, thank you, Ben. I talked you next week.