Review: ‘Weather Girl’ is partly sunny
September 4th, 2009 at 10:13 am by Laff at the Movies under Entertainment
(”Weather Girl” to play one-night only on Lifetime network, Wednesday 9/23 at 9:00pm – stars Michigan native Ryan Devlin, who went to High School in Grand Rapids area)
(”Weather Girl” made its Midwest Premiere June 12/14, 2009 at Waterfront Film Festival and was in limited release in West Michigan starting September 4th for one-week only)
“Weather Girl” is cute and funny, but not great, if you really want to see it you should… but you could wait to rent it and be happier with your decision at home.
Waterfront Film Festival doesn’t have awards, but even if it did, I don’t think “Weather Girl” was good enough to beat out a solid crop of movies. “Weather Girl” did win at two other film festivals: it won Best Film at Vail Film Festival and Best Feature in Oklahoma City.
“Weather Girl” is more of a 16 and older kind of movie, its not raunchy, but it does have some colorful language and sexual references.
( My spoiler-free review )
Going into it, this movie had several things going for it: the story is set in Seattle (the TV market where I attended college) and its about TV news… the profession I started in before graduating from college. But there’s something a little bit off… not quite making this movie great… its nice, but not all the characters have depth, and there’s some things about the story that were problematic.
The story of Sylvia (Tricia O’Kelley), a weather forecaster on a Seattle morning show, is cute, funny, and feisty… O’Kelley is the strength of this movie, if she didn’t pull it off, the entire movie would have crumbled. Unfortunately, as good as she was in this role, this movie still failed to wow the audience.
“Weather Girl” features some well developed characters: brother Walt and his friend Byron… and some shallow characters: Dale, Sherry, and Sylvia’s friends.
Patrick J. Adams, Michigan native Ryan Devlin, and Tricia O'Kelley in "Weather Girl" courtesy Secret Identity Productions
The brother of main character Sylvia is Walt, played by Michigan native Ryan Devlin. Devlin was (according to IMDB) born in Lansing, graduated from Forest Hills Central High School in 1998, and graduated from Michigan State University.
Patrick J. Adams is good as Walt’s friend… and the now-popular comedic actress Jane Lynch (”Role Models”, “The Rocker”, “The 40 Year Old Virgin”, etc.) is good as expected.
But then the performances start to tank… despite names like Mark Harmon, Jon Cryer, and Blair Underwood… luckily the other characters take up a lot less screen time.
Harmon plays Sylvia’s ex-boyfriend Dale, the self-centered prototypical anchorman of the group. Dale’s co-anchor Sherry (Kaitlin Olson) is also Hollywood’s version of what TV news people must be like… right?
Wrong… well, maybe right for this story but it was bothersome how dumb (considering Seattle’s market size) and how shallow the characters were and how average the acting behind the other characters was… I never felt like they were real characters… or working at a real TV station… or really living in the real world for that matter.
THE BOTTOM LINE:
“Role Models” is funny, dirty, and charming all at the same time… this was a fun “R” rated comedy… imagine an older Steve Stifler (”American Pie”) and an unmarried Pete (“Knocked Up”) then mix in two great young actors and a bunch of low-brow but funny jokes and gags with a nice, albeit predictable storyline… and you get your money’s worth (at least for a matinee)…
“Role Models”