Marlboro Road Gang Productions,
Max Baker, Kerry Bishé, Edward Burns, Matt Bush, Brian Delate, Marsha Dietlein
Johnny Rizzo (Matt Bush) is a young man, engaged to be married. He’s working his dream job, a radio announcer with a sports talk show, but not making any money. But his fiancee is very used to living the good life, being spoiled by her father who is supporting the two of them. They decided Johnny must take a new job, a boring cardboard box factory job, but one that will pay him three times his wages. Hating to see Johnny throwing his life away, his Uncle Terry (Edward Burns) invites him out to the Hamptons for a weekend to try to save him from an awful mistake. After he meets a charming young lady there, he has to look deep into his soul to determine the right thing to do. While he tried to be good, everyone tries to turn him bad.
This is a decent film, actually. I found myself unable to pull myself away from the film. Matt, as Johnny does his best Ralph Macchio, Karate Kid impression, but he does nail the character. Maybe he’s a little too good, but he’s one of us miserable nice guys who gets walked over by everyone else. Terry is a little too bad, on the other hand, although I’ve known guys almost this bad. He’s pulling an Eddie Haskell impression out of his repertoire. But bring it all together and it’s believable. This is a Watch Instantly film on Netflix and perhaps can be found on cable from time to time, but it’s a fairly decent waste of an hour and a half, and a bit of a surprise to me. I didn’t expect it to be nearly as good as it was, and though I was expecting to bash it from the start, before I knew it I was pulled in and actually cared how Johnny worked this thing out. If you have some time to kill, you could do a lot worse than this one.
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