Sweet November is a movie about love, time and sacrifice. It tells the story of a workaholic advertising man (Keanu Reeves) who meets a free spirit who has a special gift for healing emotionally scarred men.
Sara takes on a new boyfriend every month and helps them grow before moving onto another one. She also tries to get her November man to realize that there is more to life than work and money.
Storyline
Sweet November tells the story of an unusual relationship between Nelson Moss (Keanu Reeves), a workaholic advertising executive and Sara Deever (Charlize Theron), a free-spirited woman who takes him in for a month in an attempt to change his life. Their unconventional relationship offers lessons about life, love and the things we value.
The film is loosely based on the 1968 movie Sweet November written by Herman Raucher. It stars Anthony Newley and Sandy Dennis; with some differences in the plot.
In the original film, a Brooklyn hippie named Sara (Sandy Dennis) takes in a self-absorbed businessman (Anthony Newley) and helps him to overcome his emotional problems by being his therapist for a month. The two lovers fall in love, but she has been hiding a terminal disease.
Despite some positive aspects, the film is a sloppy romantic comedy. The chemistry between the leads is weak and the plot is extremely contrived. The last half hour is very heavy handed, and the implausible ending completely destroys the film’s integrity.
While the concept is intriguing, this film is not one of the best romances I have seen. The characters are not developed and the movie goes through a lot of unnecessary and pointless events in order to get its climax.
There are also many cliches in the movie like the Stuart Little-style toy boat race and a scene where they go to an animal shelter and break into an experiment. In addition to all this the movie is very slow, which makes it difficult for viewers to understand what’s going on.
Charlize Theron is very talented and her performance in this movie is quite good. She is an actress who has won many awards and she has a very unique style of acting. She has a beautiful smile and she is very pretty. She is also a very funny actress and she has many amazing lines in this movie.
Cast
In the witty and wistful Sweet November, Brooklyn’s free-spirited Sara (Charlize Theron) takes on a new man each month to help him become a better person. She makes an odd proposition for a workaholic businessman named Nelson (Keanu Reeves): she’ll live with him for a month, and help him get his act together.
The story may be a bit predictable, but the film’s charms eventually win over viewers. Reeves and Theron have a natural chemistry that’s as infectious as it is appealing. Their chemistry is aided by the supporting cast, which includes Jason Isaacs as Chaz, Sara’s down-stairs neighbor and Liam Aiken as Abner, her 10-year-old fatherless neighbor.
Although the film is based on Herman Raucher’s 1968 screenplay Summer of ’42, it’s also a reimagining. The original starred Sandy Dennis and Anthony Newley as free-spirited Brooklynites who make an odd proposition to an emotionally unsatisfied workaholic businessman: she’ll live with him for X months, and help him learn to be more of a man.
What follows is a flurry of high-speed action akin to that seen in other workaholic romantic comedies, but the film’s most enticing moments occur in the final half hour, when it turns up a terminal disease plot device that’s as big as its namesake. While the film’s most impressive moments are the smallest of all, it’s the one that strays the most from being the most memorable.
While it may have a few minor technical or scientific triumphs, the film’s most interesting accomplishment is its depiction of the power of love. The film demonstrates that love is an emotion capable of coping with the toughest of challenges. But it doesn’t quite prove that love is the best a person can do, and it’s a shame because the movie has a lot to offer.
Director
Director Pat O’Connor was a newcomer to the world of filmmaking, but not to the world of romantic drama. The producer, Deborah Aal Stoff (also Keanu Reeves’ manager) had originally seen the original Sweet November in 1969 and was so moved by the story that she wanted to bring it to life.
The film follows Sara Deever (Charlize Theron), a woman who dates a different guy each month to help him become a better person or overcome an issue before she moves on. Her self-assured, impulsive attitude is a challenge to Nelson Moss (Keanu Reeves), a hard-nosed advertising executive.
When he meets Sara, his sharp edges soften and he begins to fall in love with her. But he also discovers that she’s carrying a secret.
In this remake of the 1968 film, Reeves and Theron are excellent in their roles. The script, which has been rewritten by Deborah Aal Stoff and her husband Erwin Stoff, is fresh, unconventional, and offers plenty of emotional insights. The only problem is that the movie’s heavy-handed pace and implausible ending detract from the film’s potential to be a worthwhile, heartfelt experience.
Rating
Based on a 1968 film of the same name, Sweet November is about a San Francisco woman named Sara Deever (Charlize Theron) who invites a different man to live with her each month. She hopes the time spent with the man will change him for the better. Her latest challenge, Nelson Moss (Keanu Reeves), is a self-absorbed and work-obsessed advertising executive who needs to be put in touch with his softer side.
Reeves and Theron are excellent in their respective roles, and although they don’t quite have the chemistry that would make them stand out from the rest of the movie, they do manage to carry it along. The only problem is that the cliched plot twist they get into is so contrived that it does nothing to elevate the film.
It also fails to deliver the kind of empathetic insights that a romantic movie is supposed to touch. Instead, it squanders its precious emotional resources on the unsavory notion that love is something that can carry you through a crisis when it’s really just a surface feeling. It’s a dangerous misunderstanding that could wreak havoc on teen hearts struggling to make sense of their budding romances.
It’s a saddening fact that Charlize Theron was given the opportunity to star in a blockbuster, and she opted for a lackluster and cliched movie like this rather than one that would have made her an Oscar nominee. The result is a movie that does little to remedy the February blahs, and which, more importantly, does not deliver the memorable moments that romances are supposed to offer. It’s a shame that she didn’t take the chance to deliver a film that would have made her a star, and which, more importantly, might have changed the way she thinks about her own life.
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