I Could Never Be Your Woman (2007)

Yay Amy Heckerling! In a movie I guess for some reason not many people liked or saw, she has created a fun and sympathetic character caught in the hectic life of a single mother working in show business. I Could Never Be Your Woman stars Michelle Pfeiffer as Rosie, a writer-producer for the failing sitcom You Go Girl, featuring high schoolers played by 30-year-olds and overly-censored writing. She has a strong relationship with her precocious daughter Izzie (Saoirse Ronan), who has been dealing with her first big crush. While casting a geeky new student for the show, Rosie meets Adam (Paul Rudd), whose comedic timing and big personality land him the part. His instant attraction to her is obvious, but she is uneasy that such a young guy could really want her. After a couple of dates she breaks it off, attempting to be the "mature, responsible" one despite her often youthful antics/interests.

However, Adam is incredibly persistent and, after receiving an arc on the show, spends the next few weeks bombarding Rosie with gifts- usually stolen by her secretary Jeannie (Sarah Alexander)- and images of himself around her office. It's a little stalkerish, but by the time she holds a season premiere party at her house, Rosie is ready to give their relationship another shot. It works out well for a while but her lack of assurance and high awareness of her age, combined with sabatoge employed by Jeannie to make it seem that Adam is sleeping with the star of You Go Girl, Brianna (Stacey Dash), may lead to a permanent rift between them. Aside from her love life, Rosie must deal with Izzie's romantic misadventures, failing ratings, combative stars, her cleptomaniac ex-husband Nathan (Jon Lovitz), and spontaneous visits from Mother Nature (Tracey Ullman)

I really enjoyed this movie. It's smart and well-written, and focuses on a lot of different issues working women face in funny but realistic ways. It was sad to see Rosie's obsession with age and insistence on our culture's youth-fixation, but even someone as young as me can see the validity of her statements. It's an interesting, relevant topic and I think Amy Heckerling did a great job handling it both comedically and dramatically. There's a lot of female-empowerment discussion, especially in reference to older women. I also loved the behind-the-scenes stuff for the television show, probably drawn from her own experiences on the Clueless sitcom. It was nice to see a romance-centered story that didn't have romance as the sole focus. Rosie is a well-rounded character with tons of other stuff going on in her life- when Adam wasn't around, it's not like she just sat around with her girlfriends talking about him.

The performances were great, and I dug the fact that the actors' real ages were way off from their characters'- intentional or not, it was a nice little dig at the age issue in the film. Stacey Dash and Michelle Pfeiffer looked amazing, and of course Paul Rudd proves that he gets handsomer hourly. It was definitely one of my favourites of his performances; he was so endearing and unabashedly funny, often at his own expense. Saoirse Ronan was also excellent, playing the too-smart-for-her-own-good Izzie with age-appropriate innocence and charm, as opposed to the annoyingness that often accompanies similar characters.

The main thing I didn't like about I Could Never Be Your Woman was the Mother Nature stuff. Tracey Ullman kept popping up and talking to Michelle Pfeiffer about how it's nature's way for people to get old and dried up so that no young person would like them, so Adam would never actually want to stay with Rosie. I understand that it's like a reflection of her inner fears but it was just done weirdly, and I felt the character was out of place among the rest of the cast. Otherwise, a quite funny film with great focus on a strong female character. Hurray.

4/5