Release Date – 8/26/2011 (limited)
Alvin and Ellie have been together for 9 years. Things have gotten a bit stale. They are rarely intimate, the romance is gone and they don’t even have anything to say to each other. They’re looking for a way to spice things up. When several failed attempts just make things worse, they get desperate. They decide to “swing”, inviting another couple over and swapping partners. Of course this could ultimately destroy their marriage, but it’s their last resort to get some excitement into their lives before one of them is forced into a secret affair and things end very painfully. This is a British sex comedy that just doesn’t click at all. There’s no chemistry between any characters and you honestly don’t care whether they stay together or not in the end.
Martin Freeman (The Office UK’s Jim and the upcoming Bilbo Baggins) stars as Alvin. For some reason he has become completely uninterested in his very attractive wife. Even when she shows a little extra skin trying to excite her boring husband, he ruins things in the romance department. Mandy Moore plays the wife, Ellie. She’s a fashion designer in England, and terribly plain for being this well known designer. It seems like she wants to have sex more than Alvin does, which is just unrealistic if you’re a guy. Especially if your wife is Mandy Moore. I realize you’re supposed to have a feeling of no chemistry between the characters but they really went above and beyond. The whole time I was thinking they should just go through with the divorce. It’s probably the best idea. I’m sure the filmmakers didn’t want the audience to have that feeling. Their best friends are played by Jonathan Silverman and Melissa George. They’re also going through a rough patch and halfway through the movie, it basically becomes about them. And you know what, I actually cared about them more than the main characters. And then Jerry Stiller is thrown in for 5 minutes as Ellie’s grandfather for a scene straight out of American Pie, minus the pie, plus one vegetable. They went for a bit of shock comedy and wrapped that in a rom-com.
For a movie called Swinging with the Finkels, I thought the entire thing was going to be about their adventures swinging with other couples. Well, they only do it once. And the entire swinging plot point is addressed for only about 10-15 minutes tops. It definitely should have a different title. Thats not really the point though, even if it did have a different title, its just poorly written, poorly acted and poorly executed by the filmmakers. I got a handful of chuckles but cringed at how bad most of it was. There’s honestly not much more I can say about it. It would have worked better as a short film. Actually it was a short film in 2008 called Sex with the Finkels. This proves that a good idea for a short doesn’t always translate well into a feature length film. Thank God it was only 85 minutes long.
IMDB – 4.1/10
Rotten Tomatoes – 0%
Movie Wiseguys – 3/10
