Search
What's Hot
Day-by-Day Fall Schedule
Idol Winner Speaks!
Jim Parsons Comes Out
Game of Thrones Star's Sex Stare

Fish Without A Bicycle

2003, Movie, R, 97 mins

Fish Without A Bicycle: Review

FISH WITHOUT A BICYCLE
starstarstarstar
Writer-producer-star Jenna Mattison's self-reflexive comedy about a flaky actress looking for herself in all the wrong places, directed by Beverly Hills, 90210 alumnus Brian Austin Green, is the sort of cutsie-poo glop that gives chick flicks a bad name. Afraid that her picture-perfect relationship with hunky firefighter Danny (Brad Rowe) is some kind of gilded cage, Julianna (Mattison) dumps him for smug, independently wealthy theater director Michael (Bryan Callen of TV's Jack and Jill and Inside Schwartz), who casts her in a one-act production and makes her heart go pit-a-pat. Julianna moves in with tough-talking goth gal Vicki (Jennifer Blanc), her bestest friend since childhood, and tries to get her head straight about love, ambition, the pain of her mom's suicide and the agony of being cute, skinny and possessed of a shampoo-commercial-ready mop of hair, all while making a movie about her really big adventures. In between her on-again/off-again affair with Michael, she flirts with her costar Ben (Green), befriends a sage homeless woman (Edie McClurg) and goes on a series of comically bad dates with guys almost as shallow and self-absorbed as she is. The title alludes to the vintage feminist maxim that a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle — see, those bra-burning women's libbers did so have a sense of humor! — though Vicki and Jules seem to think Bono said it first. Transforming personal travails into professional triumph is a time-honored coping strategy for actors, but Mattison falls into an equally venerable first-time writer's trap: She may well have imagined a complex inner life for Julianna, but it's not on-screen. So all we see is a feckless airhead with nothing between her ears but cotton candy, and it's hard to work up a lot of sympathy for her silly problems. The film's second-greatest liability is Mattison's unfounded conviction that scrunching up her face like a 5-year-old and unrolling her big wet smile is utterly irresistible. But to Mattison's credit, she had the decency not to cut all Vicki's best lines, even though Blanc steals her movie right out from under her. leave a comment --Maitland McDonagh
Are You Watching?
Fish Without A Bicycle
Loading ...
Advertisement

Our Partners

Advertisement

Related Websites

You might be also interested in the following websites:

Most Popular TV Shows

  1. American Idol
  2. NCIS
  3. Big Bang Theory
  4. Voice
  5. Person of Interest
more popular tv shows

Most Popular Celebrities

  1. Jessica Simpson
  2. Khloe Kardashian
  3. Kate Middleton
  4. Maria Menounos
  5. Kim Kardashian
more popular celebrities

Most Popular Movies

  1. Avengers
  2. Battleship
  3. The Dictator
  4. Dark Shadows
  5. What To Expect When You're Expecting
more popular movies

Top Videos

  1. Revenge
  2. The Big Bang Theory
  3. Modern Family
  4. Days of our Lives
  5. Young and the Restless
more top videos