Sliding Doors is a romantic comedy. Rom Coms are extremely formulaic so if you want yours to stand out you need a hook. The hook of Sliding doors is this. Gwenthor Paltrows character gets sacked; she attempts to catch a train. Here is where it gets interesting, the movie splits into two distinct parallel realitys in one she catches the train (and meets the charming and Irish John Lynch…and he has an Irish brogue! *swoon*) and finds her hubby John Hannah, in bed with another woman. The second universe she misses the train and ends up not catching them.
The film shows the two universes progressing in tandem, as to highlight the changes. Despite this little innovation the film is pretty stock standard romance, it is not hard to see the twists and turns coming. Gwenthor Paltrow acts horribly; she spends the film switching between two tones and moods, (neither she does well). She is overshadowed by almost every-other character in the film.
The real stand out performance is Jeanne Tripplehorn as Paltrows partners ex wife and mistress (and she has an American accent!). The direction is average; the score is poor bar an excellent choice of song for the end credits. In the end this film is a sub average version of Blind Chance a Polish film that covered a similar premise in a much better manner.
Three stars (I gave it an extra half a star because of all the Irish accents*)
*What? I like Irish accents!
Things that annoyed me aka I am a pedantic loser
Avast forward here be spoilers!
1. 3 minutes and four seconds
Paltrow: I took bottles of vodka on Friday. It was my birthday. You know that. I was having a party, and I was running late, so I borrowed some. I bought some more to replace it.
Paul: Not a lot of use to me when I have nothing to offer the executives who dropped by late Friday.
Parltrow: You could have told them you'd run out. It's popular stuff. Bullshit, bullshit. We're in P R. That's what we do, isn't it?
But you didn't do that, did you, Paul?
Paul: No.
Paltrow: So I'm out, am I? Well, this is just perfect.
Congratulations. You wanted me out for ages. Now you've done it. Very well done.
Paltrow: Theft. Pretty foolproof. OK. I'll go. I'll go.
This is an example of Gwyneth Paltrow having a conversation with no outside input, notice how not once did Paul say she was fired, she just stood there talking to herself, before storming out.
27 minutes 18 seconds.
Customer: what do you do when you’re not working in here ey?
Paltrow: well I get up at about six thirty am making and delivering sandwiches, in the West End during the day, before I come here about six a clock, and finish as midnight. After that if I have got any energy left I give my boyfriend a blowjob
Customer looks shocked
Well what is wrong here is obvious; at the start of the movie Paltrow pretty much fired herself for nothing. And here she overreacts to a mildly suggestive line, and says something shockingly inappropriate in front of a table full of people.
32 minutes
When Paltrow asks her hubby about a brandy glass, we are treated to a lesson in overacting. John Lynch goes in no uncertain terms ape shit. All the while Paltrow doesn’t look even slightly concerned that her partner just jumped to the conclusion that she was accusing him of cheating, based on her asking about a glass of brandy.
38 minutes and 50 seconds
John Hannah is reciting Monty Python verbatim at a dinner party, no explanation is given to why everyone is laughing rather than staring at him with icy hatred. I like to hypothesize that there it a dog doing something adorable behind him.
43 minutes and 53 seconds
Jeanne Tripplehorn calls Paltrow back to her building (Paltrow has been delivering Sandwiches to them), it seems that Paltrow inadvertently gave five people at the company food poisoning. When Paltrow arrives home John Lynch asks, “What’s wrong?” to which Paltrow states "I met Cruella Deville’s less kind sister”. What the shit? you are not good with this whole job thing. You poisoned five of her employee, she said she wouldn’t take things further (which would have caused your termination), she was a bit cold to you, yes, but given that you poisoned her co workers and had her stuck with their work I would say you were pretty damn lucky you entitled snob.
46 minutes and 30 seconds
John Lynch is leading everyone in what appears to be aerobics in a bar, you expect it to be explained why, but an explanation is not forth coming.
58 minutes 34 seconds.
The point when I became bored with the draw out gimmicky movie and played with a djay program, for a while
1 hour and 1 minute
The point when Tripplehorn outshone everyone by multiple magnitudes.
1 hour and 20 minutes
Really I have been fading in and out now, and my attention is going to be even more wavering as now I have entered wikipedia, and will be clicking links for hours, god forbid I get to a page on astronomy or war time history, or I will be here all night.
1 hour and 30 minutes
The movie is over, they had a chance to make a statement with the dual car crashes there, if they had killed Paltrow, it would have reinforced a theme of fate. But no there was just a mediocre end to a mediocre movie
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