I rented this film because my girl wanted to see a romantic movie, instead we saw the most awful flat cliche movie ever. And the acting is just as awful.

I strongly advise you NOT to watch this movie.... I give it a -10 !!!

It's like writer/director Christopher Kublan took the scripts from 4 different romantic comedies, threw them in a blender, poured out the resulting scraps of paper, taped them haphazardly back together and made that the script for Giving It Up.

Firstly, it's the exact same set up as What Women Want. Ralph (Mark Feuerstein) is the hot shot ad man who exploits female sexuality to sell everything who suddenly has to deal with a new woman executive (Amy Redford) that's just joined his agency and disapproves of his chauvinistic methods. He falls in love with her and must ultimately prove he's changed his hound dog ways. The only difference is that Ralph isn't telepathic, though the fact that he's played by the same guy who was Mel Gibson's office sidekick in What Women Want almost makes you forget about that. What is all demonstrates is that some folks can make a silk purse out of a sow's ear, while other people just walk around with a rotting pig ear in their pocket.

Giving It Up also casts Ralph as one of those characters who thinks he's God's gift to women, but is really a socially inept doofus, like the Andrew Dice Clay character from Casual Sex. But the movie can't ever decide if Ralph really is just deluded or if he is, in fact, a "player". We're repeatedly told he's great at getting women into bed, but whenever we see his actual technique…it's hideous. He's supposed to have gotten laid hundreds of times, but it looks like the only variety Ralph could have in his sex life is changing hands.

Our filmmaker isn't finished, though, because Giving It Up also decides that about halfway through it's also about how Ralph's childhood shaped him to be the man he is today. So we get several flashbacks to Ralph growing up and the supposedly wacky sex-related situations he got into. Ralph also ends up talking to a shrink in scenes so poorly written, with such disjointed and disconnected dialog, that it's almost as though they lost all of the original footage of the guy playing the shrink just before the movie was to be released, so they went and found footage of a shrink from a completely different comedy and just spliced it into the scenes with Ralph.

Not content with smushing three distinctly different sort of stories together, we also get a little sprinkling of graphic sex talk like a guy version of Sex and the City, complete with a little Carrie Bradshaw moral about how idealizing female beauty leaves men unable to appreciate the real thing. And we're also smacked with one of those art house, indy film endings where the story flashes forward in time and we see how everyone has gotten along with their lives. I shouldn't leave out the brutally obvious attempt to tug on the audiences heartstrings where Ralph decided to help a struggling entertainment/educational center for kids by volunteering to do the ad work for it "pro bono".

The best way to fully describe the empty and confused essence of this film to you is to refer to the world of comic books. I've been reading the things for just over a quarter of a century and one of the greatest problems with comic books today is that many of the guys writing them have never read anything BUT comic books. Their writing doesn't bring anything new or real or surprising to the table, just ideas recycled from all the comics they (and usually I) have read before. That's what Giving It Up is like. It's as though Chrisopher Kublan doesn't have any romantic or comedic experiences to bring to the film from his own life, so he just chucks a bunch of stuff he's seen in other movies at the screen and sees what sticks.

The movie does start out with a really nice shot of a single breast in profile but, like many other so-called sex comedies, it has no other appreciable nudity for the rest of the film, leaving you to be first hopeful, then anxious and ultimately frustrated. So, if you're really, really, really, really, really hard up for female nudity, I suppose renting Giving It Up and watching the first three minutes would be cheaper than buying a Playboy.

by Dane Youssef

Kublan's "Giving it Up" is a movie which is scarce in the indie field. A romantic comedy, rumored to be the worst, sloppiest, unentertaining and most formulaic of the entire genre.

But very surprisingly, "Giving it Up" is a smarter, more-thinking person's romantic comedy. A movie that seems to have filtered out the obnoxious slapstick, trite plot points, dumb characters, monotone dialouge and Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan's routines.

Oh, there are quite a few clichés' in this movie, all right. The playboy who's tired of the game and wants to settle down and develop as a person, the bookish love interest who has no patience for his antics, the sexist supporting characters, the geeky best friend, the unobtainable finally obtained... only to realize that...

And although it sounds like the storyline from "What Women Want" (which also featured Feuerstein),no two movies could possibly be more polar opposite.

But "Giving it Up" is more than that. It doesn't rely entirely on that as so many other rom-coms do.

"GIU" is a well-played, thoughtfully-written, smartly conceived look at men, women and their views on sex and relationships.

In "Giving it Up," a New York advertising executive who specializes in selling sex to sell products is living the "almost ideal existence." He has devoted his life to attracting the opposite sex.

And it seems to be working. He has a new stranger in his bed every night. He's making fat cheddar. His hard-nosed, sexist boss (Dabney Coleman "9 to 5," "Tootsie," "Recess: School's Out" and "You've Got Mail") loves him. His apartment is lavish and full of cosmetics to polish his vessel and keep it clean. And his superhuman libido fuels his creative fires.

Enter his new boss, Elizabeth, who has heard of him and his reputation. She's smart and genuinely attractive. And quite down to earth. Ralph (Mark Feuerstein "Woman on Top" and "What Women Want"),the playboy in question is instantly smitten with her. But she's heard the word on the street and smiles, giving him the brush off.

Ralph is obsessed. He wants her. He can have every woman except the one he truly wants. Ain't it always the way? Ralph's less-lucky-in-love buddy, Peter (Ben Weber-- "Twister" and TV's "Sex in the City") asks Ralph why? Why does he want to give up the life? Apparently, Ralphie boy feels empty. He decides to "give it all up."

He's the falling Casanova. He tries to go celibate. He meets up with Elizabeth and informs her of his newfound desire to live a life with something besides sex and even tries to win her over with his outside sex-interests. Like his joy for Billy Wilder's Cary Grant-Audrey Hepburn classic "Love in the Afternoon."

Kublan's script is smart in a "Sex in the City"-type of way. Full of realistic conversations between men and women about dating, relationships, sex and their own views and look at it all.

The cast is particularly strong for an independent film. Feuerstein is a real charmer, Weber and James Lesure (From "For Your Love") are convincing and likable as his best friends. Ari Larter as the foul and lecherous super-supermodel Amber is also good for a few laughs. Amy Redford is really 100% believable as a smart, intelligent, confident (and beautiful) businesswoman who hates her self a bit for falling for this falling Casanova.

See it alone for the near Oscar-worthy performance of the magnificent Dabney Coleman, more hard-nosed, sexist and snarling than ever.

It's worth falling for.

--Having Fallen Himself, Dane Youssef