| Movie review: Duplicity |
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| Written by David Delaney |
| Monday, 23 March 2009 11:48 |
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Julia Roberts and Clive Owen team up once again for this lighthearted corporate caper that if nothing else, provides modern comical relief and indulging visuals of two beautiful people. Call this one a cross between Mr. and Mrs. Black and George Clooney’s Ocean’s 11, but not as beautiful as the Blacks and not as entertaining as the Ocean’s series. There were times in fact that the plot was simply layered too much in an effort to be sophisticated, where it actually becomes irritable - causing the viewer (me) to lose interest at key points only because we’ve seen this all before. That’s the thing with Duplicity. The movie itself is a duplicate of many others while failing to add anything new or clever. Because the two stars are so well-known and good-looking, they themselves will no doubt make this movie a money maker, but one that quickly exits to video after everyone finds out that if you want to see Julia Roberts, you can go back two years and rent Charlie Wilson’s War, where she and Tom Hanks filled in a great script, and weren’t necessarily required to carry it.
There were some moments in the movie that included Tom Wilkinson and Paul Giamatti which I found far more worthwhile as they actually added some more credibility to the movies outlandish plot of corporate warfare. Each of them and bigger than life characters battling against each other. In fact the opening sequence had a rather amusing physical exchange between the two characters and thus the stage was set for a battle of epic corporate proportions surrounding an important product launch. The bottom line is Duplicity is a high budget production that isn’t even going to make for a good topic at the water cooler. Even Julia Roberts, reported to be nude in this movie cheats us all, with innocent flashes of merely thigh and underwear. In spite of that, Julia Roberts, unto herself will save everyone else associated with this blunder. |
