Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (2004)

Idea: A small town girl, Rosalee (Kate Bosworth), wins a date with the male actor of her dreams (Josh Duhamel). When the actor turns up in her home town looking for something a little longer term, it drives a wedge between Rosalee and her best friend, Pete (Topher Grace).

That's right. I watched Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! (exclamation mark theirs, naturally). I had put it on my ZipList in a fit of Grace love circa p.s. and In Good Company, but, as it so often happens, the movie didn't show up for years. My ZipList, at 368 titles, is a complicated, unwieldy beast. It's not like I was wringing my hands over when it would arrive. It did arrive, however, shortly after a "Hey, whatever happened to Topher Grace?" moment. Supposedly he has a movie coming out this year and another two next year, and, apparently Spider-Man 3 only happened last year. I did not realize that. It feels like a really long time ago, doesn't it?

Given the fact that no one remembers this movie four years later, you'd expect the movie to suck, but it isn't bad. It's not good either, but it's not bad. Sure, screenwriter Victor Levin feels the need to shove unfortunate phrases like "Yikes-a-doo" down our throats; sure, I kept thinking that Tad Hamilton was supposed to be a soap opera star (he even has a soap character name!); sure, I found the central/secret romance between Pete and Rosalee hard to believe.

Actually, and good for them, it wasn't hard to believe in the usual I-can't-fathom-why-these-two-would-be-interested-in-each-other way. You know when you are watching a movie where one friend is in unrequited love with another friend, and it's impossible to believe that another sentient being could possible miss how in love the other person is? The object of desire is always like, "No! S/he couldn't possibly be interested in me!" And everyone else on the planet is like, "Nothing could be more obvious, fool!" That's not how things go down in this one. There were times when I found it hard to tell if Grace was well and truly besotted, so watching it slowly dawn on their third best friend (a sadly underused Ginnifer Goodwin) worked for the first time in the history of romantic comedies.

Grace plays it so close to the chest, though, that it's hard to understand why we should root for one pairing over the other aside from the fact that I personally like Grace better. In one short scene with fabulous character actor Stephen Tobolowsky near the beginning of the movie, I found myself growing more annoyed and confused with every line. We learn that Pete will be leaving town sometime in the near future. Why, you might ask? Given that he's 22 and Tobolowsky describes it was a "loss," I momentarily thought that it was a job opportunity. Not so much. Turns out he's going away to school. So then I'm thinking that he's been working since high school in order to save up money for post-secondary. But then he says he's secured a student loan. I know college is much more expensive in the U.S., but what? He's been working for four years (at least) and raking in bonuses, and he still needs a student loan? Damn. Then he find out that his date of departure is dependent on Rosalee, who he plans to ask to go with him. You, like me, are probably thinking that they must at least be casually together if he plans to ask him to move away with him. No, not so much again. They're just best friends, and this is his big move.

I know it seems like I am focused on this one early scene to a crazy degree, and I kind of am, but it's for a reason. This one scene sets up most of the plot that follows, and the rest of it makes about the same amount of sense. The other stuff, the whole win a date concept, doesn't strain credulity because a) these things happen in real life and b) somebody's got to win them, so it might as well be Rosalee. That Tad would follow her back home is believable at least within the movie: it's established that Tad is lonely, out of touch, and having some sort of between-project breakdown. Might as well do it in good company.

Still, I only zipped this movie for Grace, and, despite the sheer magnitude of the lack of thought that went into his plot, it's actually his that I enjoyed the most. Grace has the ability to sell a line in such a way where he knows what he's saying is ridiculous and he's saying it anyway because he's got to say something. He does it all without breaking character and that, my friends, is a talent worth watching, even if he does kind of play the same character all the time. At least it has yet to grate. As for the rest of it, C-.