Sweet November (2001)

Note: This page includes review and revision entry.

Unsatisfactory, Even on its Own Terms

Sweet November is one of those movies that's kind of hard to discuss your opinion of without spoiling pretty much the whole movie. If one decides to first buy into the premise, which by itself is implausible, then one's opinion of this movie pretty much hinges, I believe, on what happens from the middle of the movie to its ending. And one can leave this movie with some kind of sense of satisfaction, or one can be somewhat confused or annoyed. My impression was of the latter.

Nelson Moss (Keanu Reeves) is the ultimate ruthless 24-7 on-the-go workaholic. His work, which is his advertising, is his life. He's very successful but has lost all of the qualities that would qualify him as a human. He alienates his girlfriend. His business partner, Vince (Greg Germann), is a sycophantic slime-ball who idolizes him to the extent that riding his coat-tails is his own way to success. Yes, Reeves' character sounds very much like the Richard Gere character in Pretty Woman, except that Nelson is perhaps more of a caricature. He is the utter extreme of power-driven yuppiness, so much so that he'll just re-schedule DMV appointments in order to keep working on his latest account. However, when his secretary reminds him that ignoring this particular DMV appointment may mean that he'll lose his license, Nelson has no choice but to concede. Off to the DMV he goes.

At the DMV, he runs into Sara Deever (Charlize Theron), fumbling her grocery bags as she sits down to take the drivers test that he is also there to take. As if he were back in high school, he asks her for the answer to number 9, and as she whispers back to him that she hasn't gotten there, the proctor catches her and tells her she has to leave and come back another time. After the test, she confronts Nelson, who conveniently pays her to leave him alone. Except she doesn't leave him alone; she shows up at his apartment, and insists on his giving her a ride, since, because of him, she no longer has the right to drive. When she makes a scene, he grudgingly agrees. They have a little adventure, and by now Sara knows Nelson enough to see that he is a cold-blooded all-business-type who needs some real human joy in his life. She asks him to live with her at her run-down but quaint little apartment for one month, this November, and she will loosen him up, or, as she puts it, she will "help him." Nelson doesn't think he needs help, so he leaves. But conveniently the following day's events leave him in the perfect position to be able to accept her proposition. After she pesters him some more, Nelson agrees to play along. After he nearly hurts her feelings, he decides to earnestly give her a chance to "help him."

It seems the story is all right when it is about transforming Nelson. However, halfway through, it starts to have a lot to do with a development of Sara. She seems infallible for a long time to Nelson: she is joyous, carefree, is friends with everyone, loose, liberal, unencumbered, etc. And she doesn't do this "favor" just for him; she has apparently selflessly taken in a dysfunctional man every month in order to enlighten him. She really appears to be the caricature completely opposite to Nelson's ruthless ad exec. And then, in the middle of November, he finds out that she's human after all, and that she has some issues which trigger sour emotions. And perhaps there's more. This is where it seems that the tables have turned, and that Nelson might actually be in a position to help Sara.

The fact that the film shifts focus at this point bewildered me somewhat. How it ended bewildered me more. I regret that I have not seen the original 1968 film on which this version is based, because I wonder what precise ideals the story was trying to present, and I wonder if the 1968 version did a better job than this current one. I think I understood the point of the story in the end, but I don't feel it was presented very convincingly. There was room to question the wisdom of the decisions that Sara makes at the end, and I think in order for this kind of movie to work, there should be as little room as possible for one to have doubts about the strict idealism presented.

If what I'm writing sounds a bit vague, it's because I don't want to give something away (even though, truthfully, it becomes somewhat obvious in the course of the film). I'm about to give it away below. I'm doing this because ultimately I don't recommend this movie, which ends up being a hard-to-swallow fantasy with very extreme characters. People who just hate spoilers can stop reading here.

Will this movie move some people? It might. It really depends on how you react to Sara's development: the reason she does this sort of thing for men on a monthly basis is because she's dying of cancer and running out of time. This, naturally, can be perceived as cheesy and manipulative, or it can be received with sympathy. Let's say one receives it with sympathy. Now one's opinion of the story will be highly influenced by whether or not you agree with the actions of the character of Sara, and whether or not you buy what she's selling. I can't say I agreed nor that I bought it. Then idealism presented here is that one wants to be remembered for being vibrant and full of life, and not sickly and dying. For this reason, Sara sacrifices anymore time with someone she has come to love, i.e. Nelson. That, to me, is just foolish. Shouldn't a loved one be permitted to embrace another in health and in sickness? Unfortunately, the story sticks to its own idealism, and that didn't sit well with me in the end. For impressionable people, Sweet November may be sweet; for the rest of us, though, it may give us a feeling of indifference, and maybe a little headshake at the foolishness of some of those ideals.

So what you get in the end is a story that starts out hopeful, but then gets sappy. Then it presents a solution and ending to the story which one can only buy into if one was probably inclined to do so in the first place, meanwhile causing the other viewers to be disappointed. I'm not even going to go into the acting or other production aspects of the movie because the movie can stand or crumble on the story alone.

And I leave you with this thought: Robin Williams' character in Good Will Hunting had a much better idea of how to appreciate love than the character played by Charlize Theron in Sweet November ever will.

Rating: 4/10

©Jeffrey Chen, February 25, 2001

REVISION

In my 2001 Hindsight article, I wrote regarding Sweet November:

Two other movies that I went too easy on: Sweet November and The Wedding Planner. Both benefitted from the fact that I was new at this reviewing business, and I was trying to give whatever I saw more than a fair chance. As a result, they got 4/10 each. Looking back, both of these movies don't deserve more than a 3/10, my rating for a solidly bad movie.

Revised Rating: 3/10

©Jeffrey Chen, Jan. 13, 2002

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