I like Ben Affleck.  Not in an ‘I want to have his children’ kind of way, as if that were even biologically possible, but dude is okay with me.  I thought ‘Daredevil’ was very entertaining and it wouldn’t surprise me in the least if he gets an Oscar nod for his role as George Reeves in ‘Hollywood Land’.  He seems like a nice enough, easy going type of guy so I don’t know how he has managed to garner such ill will from so many people.  Yeah, I saw ‘Gigli’, ‘Jersey Girl’, and ‘Reindeer Games’ and though I hated those movies, that hatred didn’t transcend to anyone who was IN those movies.  Case in point, I have absolutely no ill will towards Jennifer Lopez, George Carlin or Gary Sinise.  That being said, I found Mike Binder’s new comedy ‘Man About Town’, starring the afore mentioned Ben Affleck, a lousy comedy, a lousy character study and a lousy relationship drama, but this opinion is simply based on my seeing the movie and not on any preconceived notions of anybody who’s in the movie.

Affleck is Jack Giamoro, a high powered Hollywood talent agent who is running head first into a life crisis.  You see, he who doesn’t know who he is.  So he takes a class at the local university taught by a snooty British professor by the name of Dr. Primkin (John Cleese) on journal writing.  The object of the class is to record your most personal thoughts about yourself and your life in an attempt to figure out who you are.  Jack is hesitant at first, but soon he gets to rolling on his assignment and begins jotting down every damn thing.  He believes his wife is cheating on him, he questions his penis size, he thinks his father (Howard Hessman), a recent stroke victim for whom he is now caring for, hates him.  He also writes down all kinds of sensitive business information about how and he colleagues illegally came to acquire their talent firm.

Turns out Jacks wife Nina (Rebecca Romijn) is cheating on him, with his agencies top client no less.  Rebecca has a real nice figure by the way, but that’s neither here nor there.  Top that off with his partners refusing to allow Jack to fire him as client.  Worse yet, because of Jack’s penchant for being an asshole, he’s managed to piss off some guy and his girlfriend whose screenplays he won’t read which results in them breaking into his house, beating the snot out of him and stealing this sensitive journal and then preparing to print a Hollywood tell all tabloid article.  Well, now Jack and the erstwhile members of his firm must now resort to all sorts of mayhem and trickery to get the journal back.  Hopefully laughter will ensue.

Well, laughter doesn’t ensue unfortunately.  What you do get is a lot of inside Hollywood type stuff from the constant meetings, the dogged persistence, the backstabbing, the spoiled clients, and the opulent excess that these individuals indulge themselves in.  Interesting to watch maybe, but as it’s presented in this film it just ain’t funny.  In Bender’s previous film, the well received and far superior ‘To Sleep with Anger’, he pursues a similar vent with a middle aged woman in a midlife crisis engaged in a relation ship with a flawed individual and a screwed up family.  The reason why ‘To Sleep with Anger’ succeeds and ‘Man About Town’ doesn’t goes beyond Joan Allen and Kevin Costner being better actors than Ben Affleck and Rebecca Romijn, which, well, they are, but that’s not the issue.  In ‘To Sleep with Anger’ Bender had comedic elements in a very serious dramatic piece.  The story arc was more inline to his outstanding HBO series ‘The Mind of a Married Man’.  ‘Man About Town’ relies a lot on slapstick and sight gags and is presented as an all-out comedy and a lot of the humor falls flat.

It doesn’t help either that Affleck’s Jack Giamoro garners no sympathy from his audience since he’s is most certainly an ass, and one questions why he wants to get to know himself, because I can guarantee you he won’t like what finds.  Hell, I know didn’t like his ass and I barely know the dude.  Thus when Jack reacted with extreme negativity towards his adulterant wife, it seemed an accurate reaction for the character.  It would appear though that Bender wanted to create her as some sort of a tragic figure, a victim of Jack’s lack of inner self, thus she whores around outside the marriage in search of her self.  But as she tells Jack, the sex was empty nothingness.  Whatever.  I need to see if those bullshit lines works next time my wife catches me over at the neighbors borrowing a cup brown sugar.

It’s too bad really, but in watching ‘Man About Town’ it seemed like it should just be better.  It had a decent cast, and an accomplished director, but Mike Bender, who began his career doing stand up, missed the spot on the comedic elements of his film.  Nonetheless, Ben Affleck is still an OK dude in my book.