The Southern California singles dating scene. I sure hope you care a lot about it before going into this comedy flick ‘Meet Market’ because it does very little to make you care about it coming out of it. But who cares that I don’t care about the California Dating scene because as an old married dude, I see that this is a Sex Comedy, so I’ll settle for some sex and some comedy, yep, that will work just fine for me. You know what, since ‘Meet Market’ didn’t give me a lot of sex and even less comedy, I’ll settle for a brief running time and a quick end to my self inflicted misery. SUCCESS! A lot like your first sexual experience, ‘Meet Market’ was painful but brief with the difference being I don’t think it gets better the more you experience it.

Director Charlie Loventhal’s film starts out promising enough as we are at a supermarket where hopeful singles give us little monologues about their dating woes, hopes and dreams, and though I don’t know how he would have pulled it off, but the film probably would have been better had our principles never left the supermarket. Alan Tudyk is Danny the Hollywood Screenwriter who is that lovable loser type and groans about the sad state of his love life, until he sees a pretty girl on roller skates. Jane (Aisha Tyler) is an obsessive compulsive who is rearranging the shelves at the supermarket, though it’s not like her job, and speaks to us of her need for order until a mysterious man hands her some Fresh Woods scented Pine-Sol or something and makes her heart skips a beat. Linda (home girl Elizabeth Berkeley) is that hopeful starlet from the Midwest looking for a big break, but instead usually finds big assholes who just want one thing. Tess (Susan Egan) just wants some passion in her boring life and the clown she’s with now just isn’t providing enough of it. As if hearing her complaint Tess is grabbed by the passing by limey rock / punk strumpet Lima Lipps (Suzanne Krull) who forces her tongue down Tess’s throat, which I do think is against the law, and now Tess is about to get up close and personal with her inner lesbian.

Eventually all these people leave the supermarket to experience their new experiences which leads to the introduction of a new crap load of characters such as Hutch (Julian

McMahon) who is the mysterious person who gave Jane the Lysol or whatever and is a vapid, vacuous and vain actor who puts the make on Jane’s best friend Lucinda (Krista Allen). Or there’s Billy (Laurie Holden), Danny’s hard assed personal trainer who sets the man up on one disastrous date after another. Then there’s our home girl Linda who after getting improperly propositioned by one Hollywood producer too many has taken to serially killing them. There’s more but heaven knows we don’t want this lousy review to end up longer than this lousy movie.

Though I am eternally grateful to no end for Mr. Loventhal making ‘Meet Market’ as brief as he did… eternally grateful… but because there were so many characters and so many story lines and so many supporting characters in his film, it probably needed to be a whole lot longer than it was. But since the film was so short and since there were so many characters, for a film like this to succeed, it had best be really funny. It had better be funny because not nearly enough time was going to be given to any specific characters, which in theory should allow us to get to know and care about all these characters.  But that didn't happen and as a result we didn't give a damn about them, so, it had really better be funny. Though ‘Meet Market’ had its moments, there weren’t really enough of them to carry this thing to the finish line.

In addition to the failed comedy elements, though the effort was certainly there, there just wasn’t enough sex in this sex comedy to quite honest with you. Krista Allen talks dirty on occasion but I’ve seen what Krista can do, and I know she’s capable of a lot more than dirty talk. Use you resources man! As a matter of fact, the majority of the nudity in the ‘sex’ comedy consisted of Julian McMahon walking around with his shirt off, which I’m sure fans of the actor can probably dial up on any given episode of their ‘Nip/Tuck’ DVD collection. The movie wasn’t completely terrible as Susan Egan’s character had an interesting story line and Alan Tudyk is really a very good comic actor, but overall the movie just didn’t deliver on what it was promising.

Now more curiously is our director Charles Loventhal who appears to direct a movie for the first time in like fifteen years, this after making ‘My Demon Lover’ back in 1987, a film which I think I actually saw. Hell, it might be in my collection somewhere and I believe I may revisit it to see Mr. Loventhal’s early promise. But though his ‘Meet Market’ did have a decent chuckle wedged in its brief running time here and there, it was still a sex comedy without enough sex and not nearly enough comedy.