What can be said about a film that Lindsay Lohan turned down in the late 2000’s? This low budget film about a blossoming romance set at, and filmed in, a Renaissance Faire didn’t exactly have a high bar it needed to traverse. It courted the likes of Jack Black, Tim Robbin’s, John C. Reilly, Williams Arnett and Cary Elwes before ultimately settling on the talents of Owen Benjamin, Christina Ricci and Cedric the Entertainer. I can only imagine this film with Tim Robbin’s, fresh off of City of Ember, lending his clout to what feels like a no budget film using the existing Renaissance Faire and those in attendance to hide the lack of budget. The whole film radiates that lack of money, yet it is not without its charm. The two leads are likable enough to mitigate some of that, especially Christina Ricci who, after an awkward opening scene, settles into her role, poorly developed as it is.
The story follows two very different people. First we have Kate (Christina Ricci) who has been set up for a job interview with an investment banker. But she finds such a job to be stifling and bails mid interview to pursue acting instead. Somehow this means getting a job at a Renaissance Faire where her sister Jo (Louise Griffiths) works. Will (Owen Benjamin) is a college football quarterback who never attends classes, skating by on the goodwill of professors who pass him to keep him on the team. One professor, however, (Cedric the Entertainer) refuses to play ball and will not pass Will unless he takes a job for three weeks at the Faire. If he gets fired, he fails. If he fails, no football in the fall and gone are his chances at the NFL.
Things start off rough for Will who looks at the Faire as silly and beneath him, populated with nerds in tights. That all changes when he meets Kate and sparks fly almost immediately. Unfortunately, one of the upper class, Prince Rank (Chris Wylde) has also set his sights on her, romantically. He’s determined to coerce her to the upper class team to compete alongside him in a talent show that determines which team will be the upper class citizens next year. Meanwhile there is a secondary plot involving Crockett (Matthew Lillard) who has found himself on the wrong end of a castration curse from one of the local witches, a curse that will go into effect should he engage in intercourse. He and Jo were once a couple but broke up when he cheated on her years ago. Now, repentant and wanting to get her back he needs to rid himself of this “curse.” To protect himself while the curse is active he wears a metal chastity belt.
When this film is not being insufferable goofy it does have some genuinely sweet moments to it. Owen Benjamin does a credible job as the romantic lead, playing the cocky jock who’s always had people bend over backwards for him. Unfortunately it becomes difficult separating the performer from the role in this case and Owen is one of those people whose personal views and actions are so heinous that it mars the entire production. If you can put those things aside, or better yet be oblivious to them, this character works. He has an arc that is legitimate and not over sold. At the end it is believable that he has a small amount of respect for the people who frequent Faires while at the same time will probably never go to one of his own accord ever again unless Kate drags him along.
There is a level of cringe that permeates many scenes throughout All’s Faire in Love. Rank spends much of the film sexually harassing Kate, taking advantage of situations like when she’s manning a sort of kissing booth where the reward for successfully walking a balancing board is to kiss her on the cheek. Rank starts licking her cheek and groping her and quite frankly should be kicked out of the Faire and prosecuted. On several other occasions he takes other liberties. But he’s not the only one behaving like this. Someone in a dragon costume molests Jo, grabbing at her chest and dry humping her. Crockett, in an attempt to get his curse removed, stumbles on a coven of witches dancing around a fire. The women hold him down and attempt to forcibly remove the chastity belt. Will himself will deceive a drunk woman into spending the night with the town jester and his hand puppet Horny. This sort of bad behavior saturated raunchy comedies in the 80’s but modern sensibilities have mostly seen it dropped by the waste side. It’s downright depressing to see it crop up again in a more recent film.
The love story between Will and Kate is really the only thing worth watching in All’s Faire in Love and even that is problematic. For one, neither of these two are much of a character. Will is a stereotypical douce bag jock forced into his situation by a teacher who won’t just give him a free pass in academia. It’s not much of a character but at least it’s something. Kate, on the other hand, is a cypher. Her opening scene in the bank is just awful but it gives her the only background information we get and it makes no sense whatsoever. She wants to be an actress rather than an investment banker. Okay, but how does going to a three week long Renaissance Faire further her acting goals? The film doesn’t tell you. Her plans are generic and don’t seem to play out in any meaningful way onscreen. The two actors have chemistry but it’s wasted on generic, undeveloped characters.
Some of these complaints can be forgiven had the film been genuinely funny. Unfortunately it is not funny. The only real laughs come from Matthew Lillard who seems to be having a blast playing Crockett. He gets the most development complete with a backstory and a history with Jo. His character actually goes through a transformation over the course of the film that is worth rooting for. He starts out as being just another goofy side character but soon morphs into someone we feel bad for and are rooting for. His plight with the “curse” is ridiculous and never really wavers from that but it’s fun enough watching his many attempts to remove it, each attempt apparently needing to be made at midnight for some reason.
This is a concept film in search of a legitimate script. It plays like the screenwriters came up with the setting and characters and just turned everyone loose to improv a film based on just that. This gives the overall affair a slapdash feel that it can’t quite overcome even in the more serious moments. The stakes are low and the comedic elements are even lower. It feels like a mediocre Saturday Night Live skit that was somehow allowed to run on for the entire length of the show. The two leads are fine but have nothing concrete to develop their characters on and what little they do have is so generic that it’s almost laughable on that level alone. What little there is to enjoy is sporadic and amounts to little, only coming to play heavily in the final third of the film. By then it is too little too late to save this mediocre rom com.
Release Date: October 28, 2011
Running Time: 104 Minutes
Rated PG-13
Starring: Owen Benjamin, Christina Ricci, Chris Wylde, Matthew Lillard, Cedric the Entertainer, Louis Griffiths, Martin Klebba and Ann-Margret
Directed By: Scott Marshall
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