One time wonder boy Cameron Crowe wrote and directed this surprisingly dated comedy about the love lives of some young adults in Seattle. Set during the period where the "grunge" trend was developing. If the film has any interest at all it's as a look into a time when bands like "Pearl Jam" and "Alice in Chains" were beginning to take off. The rest of the film, not so great I'm afraid.
The story is really conventional boy meets girl stuff. Campbell Scott is a city planner who meets environmentalist Kyra Sedgwick. They begin a relationship which results in her getting pregnant, him proposing marriage, her losing the fetus and both ultimately breaking up. Will two such attractive people rediscover their love for each other? In the meantime perky coffee shop waitress Bridget Fonda has the hots for grunge band leader Matt Dillon who is fronting a group called "Citizen Dick." Will Dillon finally realize that cute Fonda is the girl for him?
This is an extremely light weight story to hang a film around and it really depends on the actors, the dialog and the situations the writer creates. In this case the actors are fine, the dialog at best is predictable and rather banal and the comedic and romantic situations are not very interesting. It's all been done before and done better in other films. I've seen films from the 40's and 50's which seem more contemporary then this antique. Singles actually got fairly good reviews at the time of it's release for what that's worth.
Cameron Crowe is a big admirer of Billy Wilder and even published a series of interviews with Wilder. But as it turned out, Crowe was no Billy Wilder. After some initial success with films like Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Jerry McGuire and Almost Famous his career his descended into movie mediocrity. Singles was in some ways almost a preview of where his career ended up with films like We Bought A Zoo, Elizabethtown and Aloha.
The running time is 99 minutes.
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