Susan Granger’s review of “HEAD OVER HEELS” (Universal Pictures)
Despite the presence of teen heartthrob Freddie Prinze Jr., this romantic comedy trifle has little going for it. “I’m the woman with the worst judgment in men” confesses Monica Potter (“Patch Adams”), a restorer of paintings at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, who moves in with a quartet of Manhattan supermodels. During her nightly voyeuristic ritual, she thinks she sees her neighbor – a handsome fashion executive, played by Prinze – beating a woman to death behind the shades of his apartment. This is not only traumatic but disappointing, since Monica goes positively mooney over Prinze. “He must have some huge flaw,” she reasons, “because I’m attracted to him.” But is the man of her dreams a psychotic killer? Solving this dilemma takes this amateur sleuth and her four runway companions a full 87 minutes, even though you’ve figured it out already. The bubbleheaded models – Shalom Harlow, Ivana Milicevic, Sarah O’Hare and Tomiko Fraser – boast IQs that match their body weight, which certainly doesn’t discourage the herds of sheep-like men who gather in their doorway, eager to be fleeced. Ineptly directed by Mark Waters (“The House of Yes”) from a story by Ed Decter & John Strauss (“There’s Something About Mary”) and script by David Kidd & Ron Burch (consultants on “Inspector Gadget,” “Elmo in Grouchland”), this is a dumb, tasteless twist on “Rear Window.” But you can bet Alfred Hitchcock would never have his leading lady knocked down by the leading man’s huge dog who then starts trying to hump her. And he’d never give her clichŽ-drenched dialogue like: “I’ve got the runs. I mean, I’ve got to run,” along with other bathroom humor. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Head Over Heels” is a trivial 2. Off-beat? No. Off-kilter is more like it.
