Souler Opposite 2000 Horror Movie Review

Here’s something we don’t see enough of: a grown-up film about dating, commitment, and the niggling little fears that chip away at our best efforts. Christopher Meloni (TV’s Law and Order: SVU) stars as Barry, a thirtysomething standup comic with a bitter, sexist act that inflames as many people as it amuses. When a leather clad biker gives his critique with fists, Thea (Janel Moloney of TV’s The West Wing), a stable, sensible college student 10 years his junior, picks him up literally and figuratively. They’re hardly a perfect match: age differences, lifestyle clashes, and sheer philosophical outlook seem to doom them from the outset. But hope lies in the words of a palm reader who declares them “souler opposites,” in other words, made for each other.  Meloni is excellent as an overgrown adolescent who struggles against his better nature and devolves into a glib teenager whenever he hangs out with his equally arrested high school buddy (Timothy Busfield), who fuels his act with more sexist, testosterone-powered rants on sex and women. Moloney gives dignity to her Thea’s activism and never plays her new-age mellowness for laughs. She’s playful, witty, smart, and just a bit impulsive. Director Bill Kalmenson manages to bring new life to the clichés such romantic comedies are built from by taking a look with a fresh eye. It’s a sweetly modest, undeservingly overlooked film that still holds out hope for grown-up love. —Sean Axmaker