DVD RACK: SPEED DATING

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STUDIO RESPONSIBLE: MTI HOME VIDEO

• TRAILER
• BRAIN RABIES

The Pitch

“Alright lads, the economy’s in the shitter, the ongoing Priests scandal has devastated countless lives, and the rugby team just ballsed up the Six Nations. This rom-com should put the final nail in the Irish coffin!”

The Humans

Hugh O’Conor, Don Wycherley, Flora Montgomery, Nora Jane Noone; whichever inmates expressed an interest in acting that day.

The Nutshell

The most English sounding Mick ever has a crap life, despite his wealth. He “doesn’t know how to talk to girls” or some shite. Something something drugs something something amnesia. Doctor, when will the pain stop?

“I’ve never felt this way
about another guy before, but I just can’t believe how much we have
in common Mr… Hol-LOW-man? Is that- am I saying that correctly?”

The Lowdown

Speed Dating takes cinema, bends it over a cliff-face, and shoves a flaming harpoon ups its ass before watching its lifeless fleshsack crumble on the rocks below. It goes into your desk of drawers, pulls out every memento from your first love that you swore you’d never throw away, and draws ridiculous penises all over them. The kind with veins that could turn a child’s stomach on sight. It’s so bad that even Cromwell himself would have to concede that the damage this picture inflicts on the Emerald Isle makes his efforts look pitiful by comparison.

James Van Dublin (the awful O’Conor) wants to get over his cheating ex who’s fled the country. To do this, he hangs out in a grotty bar with his buck-eejit friends and goes speed dating a lot. Whenever he’s not seeing his psychiatrist (David Hayman) that is. James sees someone he likes at the bar one night, so he stalks her, gets hit by a car, loses his memory, starts liking his nurse, Susan (Emma Choy) but it turns out that the girl he was spying on was actually mixed up in drug trafficking and the police are constantly on James’s back for a confession about something, though he’s adamant that he can’t remember FUCK THIS MOVIE AND ITS CHRONIC NARRATIVE INDECISION. Indecision, as Greg Dulli once observed, is my enemy. Speed Dating IS indecision. You complete the equation.

‘An Irish Conman Foresees His
Imprisonment’

There are suicide cases more comfortable in their skin than Speed Dating. Rather than decide on one of its bullshit tones – lighthearted romance, screwball “comedy”, police procedural spoof – it smashes them all together without a care for whether or not we’ll see tomorrow. It’s not like it matters if every joke in your comedy script is wank (“oar ya willin’ ta lay yer loife on the loine?” is actually a line of dialogue); you can always just inject a new character, subplot, or direction. And if that doesn’t work? Hell, just keep doing it. You never know… it might work eventually!

We live in a world where Speed Dating exists and children go to bed hungry at night.

Cry, Darkman, Cry

The joy of a bad movie isn’t lost on me. I un-ironically own and watch Robot Jox; Paul Koslo is class in that flick. This point is paramount because sometimes when we read a review for a bad film – and calling Speed Dating a bad film is being VERY kind – we get the compulsion, no matter how illogical we know it to be, to watch it regardless. Sometimes, this isn’t so bad (S.W.A.T., Dracula Has Herpes.) Sometimes, it’s terror country. Speed Dating has no redeeming features or worthwhile message. The only good thing it ever gave anyone is this chance I’m taking to spare others from the trauma I experienced. Be warned: if you’re willing to watch Speed Dating, just make sure you’re prepared to go out and kick a pregnant woman in the bump, too. You’ll need to cheer yourself up afterward.

“Barbara, get me Doctor DiFazzio
immediately. It’s even worse than we feared. This man has 30 sets of
lungs in his chest!”

All that remains is for me to wish Tony Herbert, the writer, director, and producer of this shitshack, a safe return to Pontiac 7. Blook blook noog’o varge, traveler!

The Package

Save for a trailer, nowt. Buggeration. Feck all. Sweet Fanny Adams… all delivered with average picture/sound quality and about as much tact as a teabagging.

If you read this review and still want to see Speed Dating, your living rights will most likely be revoked.

Stan Winston is dead. Speed Dating lives.

MINUS 3 OUT OF 10