I really wanted to like this movie. But there are just way too many problems with the movie.
First off, the main character, Samantha, is working on a way to only have girl babies because she wants to get rid of Y-chromosome linked diseases. By virtue of the fact that roughly half of the world's population is female, vital genes could not exist on the Y chromosome. What's the only common Y-chromosome linked disease? Defective testicular development. The movie makes it sound like she's working on something that will save the world.
The movie basically gets its premise from her declining a marriage proposal from her boyfriend, Ben, because she decides that she needs to date around to make sure Ben is the right one. She didn't think about this in the FIVE years that they had been dating and had to wait until the marriage proposal? But fine. Let's say that's the case. Ben declines a fellowship to stay with Samantha. She's in the coat room lamenting how her life didn't pan out the way she planned. He proposes, she says no. So he says, fine, I can't wait around forever, I'm going to go to China.
One of Samantha's fellow grad students, Dr. Chen Wa Chow, gets arrested on suspicion of stealing research and giving it to China. Samantha's response? Take all her research from the lab and sneak it into her apartment to continue her research. How does she explain it when her mom asks why she brought it all home? "Because there are a billion Chinese people at Harvard Medical School and Chen Wa knew each and every one of them."
The next scene we see is them cooking and doing her experiments on the same cutting board, mixing ingredients together, etc...Really? I'm not a scientist, but even I know there's no way that's good science. Or good cooking for that matter.
As another reviewer mentioned, she starts dating extremely quirky men and that somehow validates her ex-boyfriend as a good choice. She gets upset when they can't accept her quirks (like having to test out six different sleeping positions before settling down for the night) but she won't accept any of theirs.
She eventually decides that Ben was the right one and goes to China to try to get him to take her back. She surprises him in China, and he tells her no because she broke his heart to run an experiment and date around, and because he wants someone who knows they love him and doesn't need to test him all the time. So then she's crying on the plane back home. Really? She's shocked that the guy says no to taking her back after saying no to a marriage proposal and telling him the reason for saying no is because she doesn't know if she loves him and wants to date other guys?!? How are we supposed to feel any sympathy for her?
So fine, she comes back. Her professor tells her she needs to sign a form and admit herself to a mental institution or he'll have to call the police because she's under suspicion of selling information to China. And she just goes ahead and signs the form?!? Without reading the form, thinking about it, talking to a lawyer, anything? And what's the first thing she does when she gets to the mental institution? Complain about why she's there! Let's see...she's there because she signed the form earlier that day without questioning it.
And this is where the movie got REALLY crazy. She happens to run into her friend Leslie at the mental hospital where Leslie happened to be getting electroconvulsive therapy to fix a plastic surgery procedure gone awry. (Is that even a legitimate way to reverse plastic surgery to the face?!) Then Samantha says, "I think there might be enough electricity left in your face to disable the alarm." So Samantha takes Leslie's earphones, connects one end (somehow) to the window sensor, and touches the other ends to her friend's face AND IT DISABLES THE ALARM. WTF?!
Then Samantha runs all the way back to her lab at Harvard where her professor confronts her and confesses how he was the one to sell her research to China so that China could increase their female population. Samantha surreptitiously turns on voice dictation software on the computer she's standing in front of her to record him saying this. Except that earlier in the movie, we saw that same software record dictation and show it on the screen. And not work half the time. But this time, even though that same computer monitor is facing her professor, the man who is confessing his crimes, nothing shows up on the screen. And later, when they retrieve it, it has recorded everything perfectly.
But fine, let's say that was working fine. When the FBI busts in to the lab, they are after her. But she and her friends have managed to put her professor in the cold room. The FBI comes running in and she just points to the cold room and says, "He's in there," and they don't even ask her any questions and just go arrest him. What? I'm pretty sure if the FBI was coming to arrest you, just pointing to someone else doesn't get you off the hook.
And she ends up with Ben. For some unknown reason, he chooses her.
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