Review: 100 Women

2003 semi-sequel to “100 Girls” from the same-writer director Michael Davis, with somewhat lesser, if tolerable results. Chad Donella stars as an artist/cartoonist who meets the amazingly nice and beautiful Erinn Bartlett who manages to make him smile on the worst day of his life, and hey, even gives him her number. Unfortunately it’s raining at the time, the number gets smudged, and Donella has to get a job as a delivery boy just to find out where she lives and see her again. But by then, something has happened to make Bartlett sad, and he spends the majority of the film trying to find out why. Jennifer Morrison (who looks remarkably like Larisa Oleynik from “100 Girls”, and has a similar role) plays the adorable Annie, whom Donella runs into (and bursts her ‘aqua bra’, a really cute moment, actually), and it turns out, also knows Bartlett. The two strike up a friendship, and perhaps even more. Steve Monroe (as Donella’s porn-obsessed pal) essentially takes over the scummy best-friend role James DeBello had previously, but also borrows heavily from Curtis Armstrong’s ‘Booger’ in the classic “Revenge of the Nerds”. Clint Howard, meanwhile, seems to be trying to out-gross James Hong as ‘Snotty’ from “Revenge of the Nerds II” in his role as the truly repulsive apartment manager. Chene Lawson plays one of Donella’s customers, a power-obsessed career woman who refuses to even speak to him, and seems to really like her vibrating cell phone.
 

This film might’ve actually been better than the original, given that Bartlett and Morrison are thoroughly winning in their roles, but it never comes off. There are two main reasons for this. 1) The scenes involving Howard, whilst impressively gross, are not original, and also somewhat superfluous. Monroe, meanwhile, is just plain annoying. 2) Whilst I can appreciate Davis’ attempts to give us two credible love interests for our hero- few romantic comedies have the balls to do it- he screws it up with an 11th hour twist that doesn’t come off (information that Donella wasn’t privy to comes to light), and actually, having two girls you want to see the guy get with doesn’t make for a very happy conclusion, when you know he can have just one. I liked the girl he ended up with, but the other…I had personally fallen in love with her myself, so I was feeling kinda like when Kevin dumped Madeline ‘coz he still loved Winnie on “The Wonder Years”. Wait, no…that was still worse (Seriously dude, Madeline was hot. Damn hot!). Also, Donella gets depressed about being kicked out of art school for drawing cartoons? Dude, ever heard of cartoonists? Obviously Mr. Davis hasn’t.


Still maybe worth a look if you’re desperate, simply because I believe Bartlett should be a star- she’s that charismatic and appealing (Morrison ain’t half bad either, but seriously look at her and tell me she’s not Larisa Oleynik’s twin!).

 
Rating: C

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