﻿ Little Black Book (2004) Movie Review

Little Black Book (2004)   3/53/53/53/53/5

Brittany Murphy in Little Black Book (2004)

Chat Show Girl

As a young girl Stacy (Brittany Murphy - Just Married) set her mind on two things; the first was to get a job working on a day time TV chat show, the other was to find her soul mate. After various boyfriends through college she graduates and finds work as an associate producer on the Kippie Kann (Kathy Bates - Dragonfly) chat show where they like to dish the dirt on their guests. She also meets her soul mate, sport's reporter Derek (Ron Livingston) who whilst seemingly perfect would rather not speak about his previous girlfriends. With the Kippie Kann show in crisis fellow associate producer Barb (Holly Hunter - Moonlight Mile) convinces Stacy to look through Derek's electronic little black book to find previous girlfriends details and then have them come on the show to be interviewed. But opening up Derek's little black book opens a whole can of worms for Stacy.

What is "Little Black Book"? Is it a romantic comedy? Well sort off, there is some romantic comedy in there but this isn't a romantic date movie you take a new girlfriend on. Nope instead "Little Black Book" is the sort of date movie you go on when you've been together a few months and you know what they like cinema wise. And why is that? Well because rather than just being a simple romantic comedy "Little Black Book" is more a look behind the dog eat dog world of chat shows where we have divas, backstabbing and a lot of nastiness.

Holly Hunter and Kevin Sussman in Little Black Book (2004)

Now the cross over idea of using the catty world of day time chat shows with a touch of romantic comedy with an assistant trying to discover about her boyfriend's past is an entertaining one but what this movie does with it left me unimpressed. Maybe it is the combination as on one hand you have some generic rom-com style humour with plenty of cheesiness and then you have the more sarcastic humour of the chat show world. Or maybe it is the simple fact that the whole behind the scenes look at TV, the back biting and cattiness has been done before and done a lot sharper than this. But something just makes "Little Black Book" meh, okayish, amusing in parts, clever in parts but as a whole not great.

What this ends up doing is making "Little Black Book" a movie which works because of the actors rather than because of what actually happens. But again because "Little Black Book" is only okayish the actual acting also ends up a bit hit n miss starting with Brittany Murphy who is likeable but she doesn't command the movie. Then there is Holly Hunter and Kevin Sussman with some serious big hair both of who are initially amusing but end up becoming annoying not long after we meet them. The same extends throughout the entire cast with even the great Kathy Bates falling foul of this mixed up comedy.

What this all boils down to is that "Little Black Book" ends up kind of a disappointment as it has some interesting ideas but then fails to really make them work. It makes it a movie which you will watch, curiosity or boredom will get the better of you, but once it is over you won't feel any desire to watch it again.