Movie Review: She Came to Me

Somewhere in New York City, probably over a year ago, there was a dinner party with actor Daniel Day-Lewis, his wife, writer director Rebecca Miller and several other actors including Anne Hathaway, Marisa Tomei and Peter Dinklage. During this dinner, a favor-bank was created that included possible movie deals and future collaboration. Unfortunately, one of the deals was an agreement to make the new movie “She Came to Me”, where even the title of this strange production makes little or no sense.

This entire story seems to be entirely about being as extremely different as possible, never interesting or good. This all starts with the two main characters Steven Lauddem, played by Peter Dinklage who is a writer of Opera and Patricia Jessup-Lauddem, played by Anne Hathaway who is a therapist. From the start of this movie, we are expected to believe that Anne Hathaway is married to Peter Dinklage, which in the real world is highly unlikely. It turns out that Steven has been creatively blocked for 5 years, unable to turn out another Opera and his frustrations are having a negative effect on the marriage. This leads to a meeting between a drunk Steven and Katrina Trento, played by Marisa Tomei at a bar, who is of all things a tug boat captain. Within 30 minutes we realize the problem with this film, trying so hard to be different, weird and strange, forgetting any attempt just to be good. A tug boat captain? Really?

Then Katrina and Steven have a one-night stand, later finding out that Katrina is a love and sex addict. A sex-addicted tub boat captain - easily a character we have never seen in any movie before. Who is now obsessed with Peter Dinklage? Soon after Steven breaks free of his creative block by falling by falling off of a pier and while under water is suddenly struck with a new idea for an Opera. Another implausible scene.

There is a subplot with Steven and Patricia's son Julian and the daughter of their maid that later becomes the main plot with a final series of scenes that are an attempt for them to get married for Julian to avoid a possible statutory rape charge. It turns out that the husband of the maid is a court stenographer and also a Civil War reenactor - covering all the bases as far as professions within this story. Convoluted and insane, as the characters and plot are all over the place forcing different ideas and nonsensical situations, forgetting about quality or respecting the audience.

There is a scene with Patricia going crazy during a session with one of her patients and starts taking off all her clothes while screaming – that is one of the most insane out-of-place crazy scenes I have seen in any movie, much less one that is supposed to be a thrown-together romantic comedy. It was hard to believe that Anne Hathaway agreed to shoot this scene, considering it was bad enough she was in this film in the first place.

It makes no sense that any screenplay in this stage of a creative writing process was greenlighted before about 5 more re-writes, much less 3 named actors agreeing to make this movie, that was nowhere near ready to start shooting. This film reminded me in some ways of the movie “Maybe I Do” that was released in February of this year and included several well known actors who once again agreed to make a movie before reading the script first.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this film are a correct and very low 46% that could be even lower at 25%. This movie is a very surprising big miss, especially considering the named actors involved.