Little Black Book (2004) Review

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(More customer reviews)As a general rule, I try to avoid anything with Holly Hunter in it - but Brittany Murphy is just so darn cute, and Kathy Baker always turns in a great performance, so I decided to give Little Black Book a go. It was a good decision. The film was different and very entertaining, in a weird sort of way, and even Holly Hunter wasn't that bad. I guess you could call this a romantic comedy, although it certainly doesn't fit the mold perfectly. It's also a satire, using one of those awful daytime talk shows our society is now cursed with as the fulcrum for everything that takes place.
Brittany Murphy is Stacy Holt, a young woman cruising up the escalator of happiness - at first. She just got a job as an associate producer for The Kippie Kann Show, and she thinks she has finally found Mr. Right and his first name is Derek (Ron Livingston). Then Derek goes out of town for a couple of weeks, and Stacy's co-worker Barb (Holly Hunter) gets her wondering about good old Derek's past. She discovers all kinds of pictures on his PDA and seeks out and interviews three of his former girlfriends, making them think she is pre-interviewing them for a segment about them (all are quite successful in their own sorts of ways) on The Kippie Kann Show. A comedy of error ensues. As you might suspect, there's a really big twist to the whole story, one that doesn't exactly come at you from the blind side, but I'm not going to ruin it for anybody.
Some people say Holly Hunter steals the show; she's good, but Brittany Murphy carries the whole movie as far as I'm concerned (I loved Kathy Bates as Kippie Kann, but hers was something of a secondary character). I'm not saying Brittany Murphy is the only actress who could have played Stacy Holt, but this movie would have bombed with many another actress. Stacy had to be refreshingly young, naïve, and - well - bouncy in an adorable kind of way, and she also had to turn that sort of emotional vulnerability on its head and trawl the depths of human drama. To steal a line from Carly Simon, whose music is featured prominently throughout the entire film, it would seem that nobody does it better than Brittany Murphy.
In addition, I always try to give credit to our four-legged actors who turn in great performances and get no credit whatsoever. The dog that plays Bob was just great, and I can't say how happy I am to see a large dog playing a role that calls for no slobbering whatsoever. This dog turns in one of the best large dog performances I've seen in quite a while.
Having watched the movie, I must say I didn't find myself wondering what I would do in the kind of situation Stacy gets herself into, though; this isn't really one of those films that make you go hmmm, in my opinion. It's just a delightfully funny movie that comes with a free dish of human drama on the side. I don't understand those who find this film depressing; certainly, it has its moments, but the ending, while different from what you might expect, is actually rather light and upbeat. Basically, Little Black Book is a comedy with more depth than you might expect, and I for one quite enjoyed it. Call me crazy, but I'm giving it five stars.

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A young woman's life begins to resemble the daytime TV talk show she works for after she is persuaded to snoop through her boyfriend's Palm Pilot and discovers more than she wants to know about his past - and present.

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