“Spread”, directed by David Mackenzie, is a movie I wanted to present earlier, maybe after Holidays. I’ve seen it … years ago, when Ashton Kutcher was still married with Demi Moore phenomenon. It is a movie about nothing. You know, I’m sometimes reviewing movies with no sense, but very popular at the time of their release.
I have had a few more fresh, and really more educational movies to write of before this one, but some aspects of it attracted me at this very moment.
Spread – Anne Heche, Ashton Kutcher
[source: imdb.com]
This is a film about the American Dream per excellence. An average guy from the mountains, observing that Brad Pitt won the Jackpot at Hollywood helped by his looks and some acting classes, took his heart in his mouth to make something similar. He went to LA, and started to feel around. He was good looking and he knew that. He knew that he hasn’t the spark needed to start on on movie business, but he could use his face just to live the good life shamelessly “spread” around him.
He started to make his living as a gigolo. Really good looking girls (actually his feminine prototype, with almost the same goal in their minds, become a star, or just to win the jackpot of marrying someone “big”) were two for a dime. He had no problem to pick any kind of female, anytime. He knew his trade before any other scope. But he knew nothing else, at least the screenplay doesn’t leave you any clue. His dialogue is lame, and the mature ladies who let themselves picked up by him, have only one goal in mind.
Now, this is not a Bret Easton Ellis story type, about a minute or a day in the world of rich kids and their satellites in the easy life of rich parents’ wealth, and their heavy drug addictions (motivated by the lack of communication with their parents, etc.) It shows with less talent, the story of one good looking outsider without brains, who just lives the Hollywood club life.
This is a movie without a subject, and the story sucks. It’s a fact, it’s a story about what can happen with 1% of the good looking guys arriving in Hollywood to make a life. Some of them have brains, the rest of them have not. The character played by Kutcher hasn’t.
Te whole movie is about how “Nikki” (even the name is feminized) picked up a rich middle aged female, in a hip night club, where he was popular with the bouncers and the rest of regulars. He was just “free” and needed a “living”. Actually, he unknowingly hit the jackpot with this one (played by the “straight” Anne Heche), who seemed to own at least a Mercedes SUV and a five million dollar mansion on the “Hillz”.
No explanations, not even hints of what is everyone really doing for a living, it’s about just having, spending, and lavishly living the day. I have mentioned Ellis earlier, who in his stories, shows at least a certain melancholy about the lack of meaning in anything. Here, in “Spread”, we have just an outsider of this kind of world, who can seduce any middle aged lady for a sandwich and more, and he is just bored of this. He became infatuated with some girl who worked in a pub.
Spread – Margarita Levieva
The difference between them is that she was his female counterpart in that side of LA, only she wanted to reach a goal. He acted as he wasn’t aware that she is like him, he foolishly tried to let us, the viewers, believe that he thought for a moment she was not anything like that, she was just a beautiful local girl, working in that pub just to occupy her time and finding ways to lay around with “really good looking” guys like him. (Sorry for the “Zoolander” sending, but Kutcher states in the movie’s first lines that he is not only good looking, he is “really good looking”.)
You have to watch it to understand that it has no scope, it’s made just for show. Its value consists in the good acting and some other poses, otherwise it’s only a soap balloon bursting in the end without an end.
Spread – Poster
Directed by David Mackenzie and written by Jason Hall, “Spread” is a 2009 release, produced by Jason Goldberg, Ashton Kutcher and Peter Morgan.
With: Ashton Kutcher, Anne Heche, Margarita Levieva, Sebastian Stan, Ashley Johnson, Sonia Rockwell, Rachel Blanchard, Shane Brolly, Eric Balfour, Maria Conchita Alonso.
5.9 imdb rating, 97 minutes.
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