Claysaba Excellent, Without a doubt!!

Baseshment I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

MusicChat It's complicated... I really like the directing, acting and writing but, there are issues with the way it's shot that I just can't deny. As much as I love the storytelling and the fantastic performance but, there are also certain scenes that didn't need to exist.

Fairaher The film makes a home in your brain and the only cure is to see it again.

secondtake Ira & Abby (2006)What a special sweet film about two people who meet, fall in love (totally and instantly), and make a go of marriage.Ira is played by Chris Messina who is disgruntled and ambitious, and he's really good at playing a mild and likable malcontent. He is going to therapy to find happiness, and getting nowhere.Abby is played by Jennifer Westfeldt and she's a sensation, a total gem on screen, scintillating and in her warm oddball way, utterly lovable. She is the opposite, of course, as movies like this require, which means she has no ambition and is utterly happy all the time. She's so happy she infects Ira with happiness--how simple is that?--and the whole movie, as well. And the audience. It's a kind of wonder how it works on everything. In a bad mood? See this movie.The best parts of the movie really show Abby's effect on Ira, on Ira's family, on strangers, and then, eventually, on herself as she has to face some unhappiness. An example scene will help--the couple are on the subway when a man with a gun sticks everyone up for money, maybe ten people. Abby sweetly (and without cornball excess, that's the wonder of it) asks him how much he needs. She'll give it to him. He's gradually mollified as she goes around collecting money from the other passengers and gets what he needs. He's suddenly willing to take a little less (this is the comedy, of course) and you see how in some bubble reality this kind of kindness might actually work. (She discovers him later with a job, and you sense that she saved him somehow by giving him that bit of sunshine.)Okay, you might wonder how to build a whole movie on this. Well, there are complications with the parents, who have various kinds of relationship problems themselves. No clues here. Eventually it's a comic can of worms and all very fun. Perfect? No, but excellent overall. I could watch it again, which says a lot for this kind of lightweight fare. Westfeldt deserves it.

Simone Navarotti I'll skip right over how annoying it is that the camera constantly found itself buried in Chris Messina's somewhat ugly face and trout-like lips, and I'll go straight into why this sort of movie is destroying America...The final conclusion of this movie was as such: Marriage doesn't work. Marriage is outdated. There is no such thing as a loyal, happy, honest, fulfilling marriage. And if you marry someone, you will never be truly happy, you'll never truly know your partner, and you may eventually end up broken, lonely, and miserable--especially if you remain married.Okay...so what team of neurotic, philandering, adulterous, marriage-hating atheists wrote this film? I hardly know where to start. Are we to believe that instead of having committed, balanced, reasonable relationships with mature and loyal partners, we are instead supposed to have fleeting, unstable, unreliable, worthless, sex-based relationships? Are we supposed to spend our precious time on earth living with neurotic, unbalanced people who do not love us? People who only waste our resources while utterly failing to be a consistent, permanent partners in our lives? If that's the case, why half-step into unstable semi-committed relationships? If there are no ethics and no decency to be considered, no repercussions for our actions--no fallacy to opening up our lives to unstable people who exploit us, then why not just invest every coin into hookers and blow? Because you can't have it both ways. Either you WORK for a balanced, healthy monogamous relationship with a person that you can trust and love--or you descend into a bottomless pit of sexual exploitation.Worse, you will commit this exploitation OVER AND OVER AGAIN, as you date and then discard multiple partners. I don't mean to preach, but this type of irresponsible behavior is EXACTLY why there are so many embittered, angry, distrusting people in the dating world. They have believed and therefore practiced the godless drivel preached in films like this one.Marriage is not evil. It has not "expired." The institution of marriage is not the problem, nor is it the reason why any particular marriage failed. Adultery is the problem. Lying is the problem. Dishonesty, stealing, rage, abuse, distrust, laziness, misuse of joint resources, IMMATURITY--these are the reasons that marriages fail! The institution of marriage has not become "bad" just because a lot of people are too selfish, envious, unfaithful and greedy to fulfill marriage vows properly.I dislike any film that is arrogant enough to judge the institution of marriage, and worse, gives such an imbalanced, deceptive and dishonest conclusion. It just sets people up to be selfish and stupid, while they attempt to make the rest of humanity their unwitting victims.

fpk28 This film was one of the worst I have seen in years. The script reminded me of a childhood game where you supply random nouns, verbs, and adjectives, and then insert them into a previously written paragraph. Actually, the game was funnier than this movie. The worst aspect of this film is the lack of authenticity that permeates the film. None of the characters has a personality; they all behave as if they were in a bad sitcom, reciting random lines that are supposed to be quirky but which are trivial at best. In addition, none of the characters displays even a cursory knowledge of the profession they are supposed to be in. For example, Ira is supposed to be working on a dissertation, but you never hear him talk about it or even mention what university he is supposed to attend. As for intelligence, Ira exhibits no more brain activity than a fruit fly. He makes no cultural or scientific references in the entire movie, making it impossible to determine what his "dissertation" might be. As for Abby, she is supposed to be a gym instructor, and maybe a physical therapist, but all she does is munch on junk food and spew out psychobabble. I have been in physical therapy, and I certainly never encountered anyone as vapid as Abby. This adds up to a film without any value. In a Woody Allen film you will hear references to literature, philosophy, and history, and the sound track will frequently feature classical and jazz music that meshes with the action (for example, Schubert's "Death and the Maiden" quartet in his "Crimes and Misdemeanors"). In this film, you have a cultural void. Sadly, the films I see from Iran and Bangladesh at the Montreal Film Festival have more cultural references than this film. Another terrible aspect of the film is its use of clichés. In one scene, the characters are forced to go into the subway (horrors!), and of course there is a man who brandishes a pistol and holds up the people in the car. Naturally, Abby has to make this funny, so she takes up a collection. To those of us who used the subway for decades, and whose chief concern was trying to deal with the delays and the inaudible sound system, this paranoid view of the subway is one more false note in the movie. Later, a flashback serves as an excuse for a sick adolescent male fantasy, as Ira imagines that Abby makes out with all the men in the car. I know that movies that display firearms have a better chance of getting distribution, and that women behaving licentiously (in other bad films women usually kiss other women for no reason) tends to be seen as edgy, but these devices are presented in an extremely contrived manner. In short, you would be hard pressed to find a movie with less content or intelligence.

jdevriend Admittedly I'm hard on romantic comedies. Too often they are wildly unrealistic, filled with characters who are inexplicably wealthy and who act like people you just want to punch in the face because they're so neurotic and self-centered. At least this one doesn't have that problem.But it has a different problem. Westfeldt doesn't really address the movie's main questions. Is it best to just "go with it", or do you have to build your relationship like you would build a building? How important is marriage, and what's the point of it anyway? Why can't people talk to one another directly? What happens to your present when your past jumps up to haunt you? If you love each other, does it really matter what your life ambition is?These would be great things to think about, but instead Westfeldt bogs down the movie by having Ira's mom get into an affair with Abby's dad. Then when this news comes to light, everyone withdraws to their separate corners and plastic surgeons and therapists. (By the way, you could see the "therapists screw everything up" angle coming from the first five minutes of the movie - in fact, I'm still waiting for a "New York romance" movie to not involve a massive amount of complaining to therapists. Or analysts, as Ira's parents take pride in calling themselves.) Granted, it was at least funny to watch. But there's a scene near the end where Abby pulls in all the therapists, both sets of parents, herself, and Ira for a giant session. While everyone else starts yelling at each other, Ira and Abby look across the room at each other and mentally reconcile. The most telling thing to me was that at that moment, you could see how many unnecessary characters there were in the movie because the room was filled with them as Ira and Abby walked out together.