dot the i (2005)

This is what happens when you watch too many movies. Neophyte director Matthew Parkhill apparently wasn't content with concocting a reasonably entertaining story about a dangerous love triangle; instead, he decided to prove he could out-clever all the other Clever Jeffs in Hollywood, and in doing so he sacrificed almost everything that worked about the film. Admittedly, I knew the big twist going in, so I wasn't as irritated as I probably would have been seeing this cold, but there's still something aggravating about a filmmaker with this level of contempt for his audience. Gael Garcia Bernal deserves mention for sounding completely comfortable with the English language and giving an accomplished performance, especially after he read the script and realized his efforts would be wasted on a shell game such as this. I guess it's an effective calling-card film, but it could have been more and were I a Hollywood executive, I wouldn't trust a filmmaker who would so eagerly shoot his own film in the head just to garner a little attention.

Grade: C