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Serving Sara tells the predictable tale of romance in bloom between Joe, the process sever, and his servee, Sara an unaware business woman. When she discovers that her husband has been seeing another woman, is about to divorce her, and is suing her for half her assets, she bribes Joe to help her serve her husband with divorce papers first, and give her the advantage in court. Doesn’t that sound exciting? (Insert various sarcastic comments here. I’m still a little bitter about spending $10 on this dud.)
Elizabeth Hurley (Ed-TV, Bedazzled) plays the naive Sara. Here again is a case of a performer having shown a lot of charm in previous outings neglecting to demonstrate any of her talent. In Bedazzled Hurley blasted past most every critics hackles by mentally manipulating her prey to deliciously funny outcomes. Her onscreen power (which is a nice blend of talent and resentment inducing good looks) is totally wasted as Sara, as the role affords her no opportunity to be smart, savvy, charming, or funny. As well, in a romantic comedy an audience generally wants to see the female lead leaving her current love (for any number of reasons; he’s a twerp/cheating/not as charming as male lead number two). In Serving Sara I found I didn’t really care who Sara ended up with; her ex husband was an absolute nit, and Joe was an ass. I half expected her to throw her hands up midway through the film and announce she was running off with a ranch hand from Texas. In my estimation Serving Sara was a colossal disappointment. The roles are poorly performed, the script is sub-par, all the best jokes are present in the trailer, and those jokes, as well as the few and far between ones in the rest of the film just aren’t funny. If you are a fan of either Perry and Hurley check out their earlier works and avoid this one. Here’s hoping whoever makes their film choices does a better job next time.
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Matthew
Perry (Three to Tango, The Whole Nine Yards) despite having
shown a lot of charm in previous cinematic endeavours like the aforementioned
films decides to show none of it here, making his Joe totally unlikeable.
Perry never puts enough effort into his role to make his character three-dimensional.
Perry’s best humour comes from a self effacing sarcasm, but here there
seems to be a touch of bitter anger laced in it, making Joe’s humour less
amiable, and more mean spirited. Perry has the talent to carry a film by
himself (like The Whole Nine Yards. Don’t even try to tell me that
would have been a amusing without him.) Being a typical country girl, I
found Joe’s reaction to the cow-scene funny, but that moment fell into
this movies big problem of having given away all the amusing moments in
the trailer. A charmless role, that could have been much better if the
script hadn’t been so banal.