To Sleep Perchance to Scream: Grief’s Latest a Comedy Cancer
Ben (Chris Marquette) and Kate (Tammsin Sursok) are about to get married, but things aren’t exactly great in the bedroom. They’re intimidated and intrigued by the relationship of their best friends, Vince (Jesse Bradford) and Cameron (Virginia Williams), who have an open marriage, the success of which is dictated by ten rules they have about it. As Ben grapples with asking Kate to have a three-way with him, he simultaneously has to deal with his struggling e-publishing business, of which Vince is a partner. They would like to land a contract with a famous children’s author, Emma Cooney (Wendi McLendon Covey) and rumor has it that she will be attending media magnate Jeff Field’s (Michael McKean) annual summer ball in the Hamptons. As luck would have it, Kate’s been working on her new home in the Hamptons, so Vince decides to hit two birds with one stone—invite two Jersey babes to stay at his pad while he crashes the party and woos the author into a deal. Only, it seems a rather packed weekend as Cameron also made secret plans to use Kate’s home in the Hamptons and Ben invited a struggling writer (Lucila Sola) to stay at the house for free while she works on a new book. In the end, couples discover that rules are violated and that being open isn’t as simple or satisfactory as everyone perhaps assumes.
While there are a number of attention worthy names in the cast list, namely Wendi McLendon-Covey and Michael McKean, even they are unable to overcome the extremely clunky dialogue they’re made to utter, the former playing a vague British author, the latter a grating pansexual harpy. If you’re left feeling bad for them, one should feel worse for the main cast members who are, more often than not, unforgivably atrocious. Fooling us into thinking that he’s actually going to get around to genuinely examining the pleasures and difficulties of straight people experimenting with a respectful and adult open relationship, Grief instead gives us what seems to be the equivalent of one, loud, adolescent fart, most of the action set within the revolving doors of a house in the Hamptons where zany and nonsensical misunderstandings assault us nonstop, struggling against all odds to be funny.
Chris Marquette (the dull straight man, so to speak) and Jesse Bradford (a smarmy lothario) actually fare better than their female counterparts, with Tammsin Sursok in a performance so odious perhaps it really does have to be seen to be believed, while Virginia Williams’, whose face doesn’t quite allow her to emote, must play the initially oversexed wife whose big secret is that she really can’t stand being in an open relationship at all.
10 Rules for Sleeping Around is truly one of those films of which there’s absolutely nothing nice or pleasant to say, a film unwisely and foolishly made because the specter of sex sells. Worse, Grief’s film pretends to rationally examine the trials of and tribulations of an open marriage, presenting it as a hedonistic trap, a door that only causes one to lose all inhibitions, proudly championing the simpler, noble notion of monogamy by its final frames. Maybe dealing with dynamic and changing needs and feelings in a committed relationship might not sound funny. But if there’s any evidence for something that sounds like it should be funny and isn’t, it’s this film.
½/☆☆☆☆☆