Review: Win A Date With Tad Hamilton! (2004)

Director: Robert Luketic | 95 minutes | comedy, romance | Actors: Kate Bosworth, Josh Duhamel, Topher Grace, Ginnifer Goodwin, Kathryn Hahn, Sean Hayes, Gary Cole, Amy Smart, Sam Pancake, Octavia Spencer

The self-righteous movie star Tad Hamilton cannot even tell his workers apart because of disinterest. In a competition devised by his managers, the uncomplicated village girl Rosalee wins a date with this hero. Her best friend Pete couldn’t have gotten it any worse; he’s been in love with Rosalee for years but never had the balls to say it. Just now that he is finally ready, this dream date comes in!

And it gets even worse: in his life Tad only meets empty opportunistic people in Hollywood and falls head over heels for the charms and purity of the naive carefree Rosalee. He visits her in her hometown after the date. Pete holds his heart, he is convinced that Tad Rosalee wants to get into bed alone.

But then comes the original twist of the film: Tad Hamilton seriously wants to improve his life for Rosalee and actually turns out not to be that dick of a guy he seems. Full of good intentions, he wins Rosalee for himself. Pete is getting more and more jealous and gets more and more down, so that at a certain point he loses the viewer’s sympathy: you don’t care anymore if Tad runs off with Rosalee, maybe she is indeed better off like this .

Until a few minutes before the end, it is indeed suggested that this movie will not get your average happy ending and that just like in real life the celebrities run off with the prettiest girls while simple well-meaning boys are left disappointed. But it is a romantic comedy, so just when the film seems to be over, a happy ending must be added quickly. That comes out of the blue, because the clichés of romcom were just as nicely avoided in the previous.

And so we are dragged headlong back into the world of romantic comedy, a world in which the Chantal Janzens of this world do not run off with the Johnny de Mol jr’s at all, but with ordinary sweet boys who only have an eye for their inwardly. For example, ‘Win A Date With Tad Hamilton’ is ultimately badly cute, where there seemed to be more in it. Perhaps a pitch-black director like Todd Solonz should try to violate this genre, very curious what it would have made of this whole. No, for really good romantic comedies we still have to turn to Britons like Richard Curtis.

Still, “Tad Hamilton” is a pleasant feel-good movie that has the same cozy feeling as an episode of the TV series “Friends”. With a little good marketing, this film can reach quite a crowd despite the lack of household names. Josh Duhamel (from the TV series “Las Vegas”) makes Tad Hamilton a really nice role, on the one hand clumsy and superficial but on the other hand also perfect and full of good intentions.

And Kate Bosworth deserves special mention. She is perfectly cast as the adorable dream girl. You must have a heart of stone to not melt with her appearance. And then the male viewer thinks to herself. Of course she plays a role here and she probably isn’t that nice in real life. That cannot be an actress who participates in the harsh American film world, can it? However, some research on the internet shows that Kate does volunteer work for disabled children in her spare time. That makes you think… Would the perfect girl with the right heart really exist?…