Giving It Up (1999)

I wanted to but couldn't!

Best movie ever!

It is neither dumb nor smart enough to be fun, and spends way too much time with its boring human characters.

It is an exhilarating, distressing, funny and profound film, with one of the more memorable film scores in years,

It's like writer/director Christopher Kublan took the scripts from 4 different romantic comedies, threw them in a blender, poured out the resulting scraps of paper, taped them haphazardly back together and made that the script for Giving It Up.Firstly, it's the exact same set up as What Women Want. Ralph (Mark Feuerstein) is the hot shot ad man who exploits female sexuality to sell everything who suddenly has to deal with a new woman executive (Amy Redford) that's just joined his agency and disapproves of his chauvinistic methods. He falls in love with her and must ultimately prove he's changed his hound dog ways. The only difference is that Ralph isn't telepathic, though the fact that he's played by the same guy who was Mel Gibson's office sidekick in What Women Want almost makes you forget about that. What is all demonstrates is that some folks can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, while other people just walk around with a rotting pig ear in their pocket.Giving It Up also casts Ralph as one of those characters who thinks he's God's gift to women, but is really a socially inept doofus, like the Andrew Dice Clay character from Casual Sex. But the movie can't ever decide if Ralph really is just deluded or if he is, in fact, a "player". We're repeatedly told he's great at getting women into bed, but whenever we see his actual technique…it's hideous. He's supposed to have gotten laid hundreds of times, but it looks like the only variety Ralph could have in his sex life is changing hands.Our filmmaker isn't finished, though, because Giving It Up also decides that about halfway through it's also about how Ralph's childhood shaped him to be the man he is today. So we get several flashbacks to Ralph growing up and the supposedly wacky sex-related situations he got into. Ralph also ends up talking to a shrink in scenes so poorly written, with such disjointed and disconnected dialog, that it's almost as though they lost all of the original footage of the guy playing the shrink just before the movie was to be released, so they went and found footage of a shrink from a completely different comedy and just spliced it into the scenes with Ralph.Not content with smushing three distinctly different sort of stories together, we also get a little sprinkling of graphic sex talk like a guy version of Sex and the City, complete with a little Carrie Bradshaw moral about how idealizing female beauty leaves men unable to appreciate the real thing. And we're also smacked with one of those art house, indy film endings where the story flashes forward in time and we see how everyone has gotten along with their lives. I shouldn't leave out the brutally obvious attempt to tug on the audiences heartstrings where Ralph decided to help a struggling entertainment/educational center for kids by volunteering to do the ad work for it "pro bono".The best way to fully describe the empty and confused essence of this film to you is to refer to the world of comic books. I've been reading the things for just over a quarter of a century and one of the greatest problems with comic books today is that many of the guys writing them have never read anything BUT comic books. Their writing doesn't bring anything new or real or surprising to the table, just ideas recycled from all the comics they (and usually I) have read before. That's what Giving It Up is like. It's as though Chrisopher Kublan doesn't have any romantic or comedic experiences to bring to the film from his own life, so he just chucks a bunch of stuff he's seen in other movies at the screen and sees what sticks.The movie does start out with a really nice shot of a single breast in profile but, like many other so-called sex comedies, it has no other appreciable nudity for the rest of the film, leaving you to be first hopeful, then anxious and ultimately frustrated. So, if you're really, really, really, really, really hard up for female nudity, I suppose renting Giving It Up and watching the first three minutes would be cheaper than buying a Playboy.

This movie is a gem! Maybe not for everyone but still a gift for everyone who take the time to understand it. Before I saw the movie I saw one comment saying it was the bastard child between What Women Want and Sex in the City and I can understand that (it was meant negative) for the first twenty minutes. Whoever said that probably stopped wathcing after that conclusion because this movie is so much more. The dialogue is excellent the script is great but I get a feeling that maybe it isn't for everyone to connect with.I however thought this was a truly great movie. The leading charachter, played by Mark Feuerstein (never heard about him before), talkt right to me! Hell I've been this man!It's seldom I've seen such good writing describing the relationships between the sexes without falling into an eager to please the audience witht easy conclusions.After watching this I got a real eager to meet the writer Christopher Kublan because he has obviously been through the same things I'm been through. It is so easy to spend you're life making it look good to other people (especially woman) that you forget about yourself and what you want. And the thing that makes you realize that is often the one you wanna love but whom detests you of what you have become of that.This is a great movie, to put it down in any ways is awful but the photoghraphy is beyond standard and they could have worked some more on the endingt. Anyway I'll give this a 9/10 at least!

I rented this film because my girl wanted to see a romantic movie, instead we saw the most awful flat cliche movie ever. And the acting is just as awful.I strongly advise you NOT to watch this movie.... I give it a -10 !!!

Christopher Kublan's debut movie as both a writer and director is simply incredible.Casanova Falling is a realistic view of men and their romantic fallings...It sheds a new light on the caveman... yet goes beyond most modern comedy/romance movies as he is honest, yet does not bash his characters for thier behaviors.It was a true blessing to see this movie at the Nortel International Film Festival in Palm Springs, CA.Left me with a smile on my face...