Attempting to flip the stolid conventions of the romcom is a noble gesture, but Nick Hurran’s Little Black Book is proof positive that the path to hell is paved with good intentions. In this unbearable morality play, obnoxious no-talent Stacy (Brittany Murphy)—who loves Carly Simon and dreams of working with Diane Sawyer—gets a job at a trashy talk show called Kippie Kann Do!! (starring Kathy Bates’s Kippie Kann), where she learns that people can act awfully low when it comes to love. At the prodding of her all-business co-worker Barb (Holly Hunter), Stacy decides to find out if her boyfriend, Derek (Ron Livingston), is a cheater by flipping through his Palm Pilot, and winds up discovering—and then meeting—a heretofore unmentioned trio of ex-girlfriends who he remains in touch with.
Throughout Little Black Book, Murphy uses her big mascara-circled eyes, tiny frame, and upturned blond locks for maximum cuteness appeal, but there’s something severely grating about her frazzled, flummoxed energy, which alternately makes her seem like a spastic five-year-old bereft of Ritalin or a hyperactive junkie who’s been awake for a week. That someone, much less the genial Derek, could put up with the self-obsessed and idiotic Stacy is doubtful, but the real question is whether anyone will enjoy the mean-spirited tone, schoolmarm-ish lecturing, and blatantly false and unearned conclusion of this little misfire.
There isn’t a single genuine or believable moment in Little Black Book, which posits a world in which Stacy can only turn off an answering machine by smashing it with a hockey stick and Ricki Lake-style programs are sometimes filmed live just so giant, unplanned events can occur in front of millions of viewers. Via the film’s “surprise ending,” the filmmakers reveal the moral bankruptcy infecting Stacy’s actions, the TV talk show format, and the cutthroat person orchestrating the film’s overall ruse. This somber, decidedly unromantic turn of events is meant to be bracingly honest, but it merely confirms that this teeth-grindingly awful film is a pointless sermon about the disastrous consequences of being a complete and utter moron.
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