michaeljayallen It's supposed to be a realistic-ish adult movie, filmed in real Manhattan locations like the Film Forum. It has a kind of flatly realistic tone. But it came out in 2007 and Nora and her friends all smoke ALL THE TIME like it's 1965 without bothering to go outside. She wears silk dresses all of the time, of varying lengths including really short, one after another. Then suddenly she's got longish denim cutoffs on. But of course with a loose ballet style top. She has emotional breakdowns all the time in public. She's having dinner with some guy and her married couple friends and she acts like a 13 year old who doesn't want to be there. She walks out of her job in an emotional huff, again like a 13 year old, not a 30 something. New York (and Sarah Lawrence graduates everywhere) 30 somethings have learned how to hide everything. She just seems more high maintenance needy than anything else.Her and her friend ask the Paris cabbie to find a nice but cheap hotel. He delivers them to a place where the room is plain but looks newly done and is roomy for a big city, has a HVAC system, and everything is color and pattern coordinated. They sneer. There's a hair dryer on the wall and they go to bed with towels on their heads. She wears all kinds of different outfits in Paris and doesn't really have any luggage, just two small to medium sized bags.SPOILER ALERT (although these points were mentioned in media reviews)All very not-normal for NYC and Paris in 2007. Then of course the obligatory not being able to figure out a way to get a phone number, for a person who is a professional high end fixer as Roger Ebert wrote about. Actually she doesn't even try. And then she acts oddly distant when she (one in a million chance) runs into the guy on the Metro.So it's not just like Roger said that there's suddenly a plot point necessitated unrealistic problem, but that the unrealisticisms run throughout a film trying to be realish.If it comes up on your local PBS station, what the heck, maybe watch it. I did. It was oddly completely washed out and I had to adjust everything to abnormal values to get it to look halfway decent, but who knows whose fault that was.

jan-603 Dull, tedious story of a neurotic, marriage-fixated, anxiety-ridden alcoholic who somehow gets a great guy interested in her. I guess the moral of the story is "Life is so unfair"? Even worse than the shallow plot, trite dialog and phone-in acting is the grating "music" - I actually started turning down the volume whenever it was playing. It makes elevator music sound like Mozart! Not only was there little chemistry between the two leads, there was even less between the two so-called best friends. Don't casting agents check for that during try-outs? Only for die-hard fans of Posey, who does the best she can with the boring script. All others, stay away - there are so many better rom-coms: The American President, Love Actually, Lars and the Real Girl, You've Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle... almost anything is better than this one.

TxMike I suppose this should be classified as a 'chick flick' because it is about a 30-something woman attempting to find herself in New York, written and directed by a woman. It moves a bit slowly most of the way but I found it interesting. An interesting character study.Parker Posey, who often plays goofy characters, is the serious character here, Nora Wilder. She works in a small Manhattan hotel, apparently enjoying her job, but seems a bit bored by it all. And, she doesn't have a guy in her life. We know that she wants one, but she usually ends up getting involved quickly with the wrong types, and she ends up sadder than she was before.The script illustrates one of these. She meets an actor in town, staying at the hotel, and has a quick fling with him. He seems sincere enough, and she begins to tell friends that she and he are an item. About that time they see him being interviewed on TV, talking about his great girl he is in town to see. Not Nora, but some actress.The main of the story occurs when a French man shows up, asks her out, but she has been burnt too many times and is very reluctant. Posey does a good job as Nora Wilder in this movie.Spoilers: After a short, good time with the French man he has to leave to go back to Paris. Nora is hurt, but he asks her to go with him. She can't she has a job after all, and duties, she can't just leave! But he gives her is contact information in case she ever gets to Paris. Soon she decides to go, and contact him, right after she got fed up with her job and her boss and quit. But once she got to Paris she discovered she had lost his contact information. Staying in Paris a while she had a good time, met some interesting people, then was headed for the airport. She meets him on the train, they get off, the movie ends with him saying "You know you'll miss your flight." She says "I know."

Gavin567 This film is a shallow treatise on the problems of locating love for a young woman in the city. The main character is self-centered, and yet seems to have no real interests. She is desperately looking for someone to love her in order to save her from herself. She is not really interested in other people, only in their ability to "love" her, even if they are assholes and total strangers. The movie takes the position that her attitude is normal, and in doing so misses an opportunity to be interesting. The movie fails to make an assessment about the existential problems of the character, or to question her myopic vision and lack of center and dignity. The film, like its characters, is a surface without a center, and ends up being mainstream, shallow, hollow, and sentimental. It's no wonder that's it's safe for audiences today, for it reinforces the popular idea that women are dependent on men for their happiness and to fill a hole or void. The film is indeed a fairy tale, for a woman who behaves like a depressed, mopey, self-hating dishrag all of the time would be very lucky to find a man to love her.