Spread (2009)

Spread isn't funny and generates very little drama because it's all about a main character you have no reason to give a damn about, but for the first 70 minutes or so it seems like it has a point to make and that's enough to hold your interest. It also helps that there's a smokin' hot and very naked Anne Heche on screen for some of that time. Then it flounders into a final 20 minutes that abandons every interesting possibility suggested in the story and replaces it with the worst kind of hackneyed clichés all built around a truly absurd supporting character. This was never going to be a great film, but it nosedives into laughably bad by the end.Nikki (Ashton Kutcher) is a man-whore cruising through the Los Angeles party scene. Once, he was one of the thousands of young people who flock to LA every year seeking fame and fortune. Now still very handsome but not all that young, all Nikki seeks is a constant supply of young chicks to bang and a series of sugar mommies to support him. With no home and no car, Nikki seduces older, well off women and insinuates himself into their lives until he gets bored and moves on to another conquest. His latest meal ticket is Sam (Anne Heche), who he throws himself at and relentlessly screws until she trusts him enough to leave him in her Hollywood hills home when she goes to New York. At that point, Nikki throws a big party in Sam's home and starts boinking young women on the side, until Sam catches him in that act. But after a flash of anger, Sam decides to keep Nikki around as her live-in boy toy.Now so far in this movie, Heche has been impressively nude just enough to hold your attention and while Spread hasn't been all that entertaining, it appears at this point it might have something to say about Nikki, Sam and their relationship. That turned out to be a bad assumption on my part. Instead of plunging into Sam and Nikki and exploring them as real people living real lives, Nikki just arbitrarily falls in love with a waitress named Heather (Margarita Levieva), almost entirely because she's the only woman in the story who resists his charms. Sam then catches Nikki cheating on her far less flagrantly than before, but this time she kicks him out. Then Nikki's life arbitrarily (there's that word again) falls apart and he winds up almost homeless and hustling middle-aged ladies at hotel pools for sandwiches.Heather then arbitrarily (getting the hint?) decides to take Nikki and let him live with her. They start acting like boyfriend and girlfriend until Nikki finds out that Heather has a rich fiancée in New York City. They sort of but not quite have a fight, Heather runs away to the Big Apple and then this thing turns into a lame romantic-comedy where Nikki flies to New York to win her back. He doesn't get her back, and the film ends with Nikki in some nebulous state of existence in LA.Spread is yet another motion picture that is reasonably well executed but horribly ill conceived. The entire thing is centered on Nikki. No other character exists except in connection to him. However, there's almost nothing interesting about him. He's an amoral and purposeless drifter who gets by in life entirely on his good looks and lack of a conscious. It's only when Sam catches him getting a blow job in her home but still keeps him around that there's even a hint of anything intriguing about this story. Sam takes control of the relationship and her own life at that moment and there's every indication that it's going to lead to a deeper look into why these two people are they way they are and the nature of their free floating sexual and personal connection.Nothing like that happens. Sam is just arbitrarily (that word keeps coming up, doesn't it?) ejected from the story and Nikki is thrown together with Heather, with the painfully obvious idea that Heather winds up treating Nikki the way he used to treat women and boy, isn't that all ironic and stuff? But Heather doesn't really treat Nikki the way he used to treat women, so there goes all that, and she turns out to be a completely unbelievable character. She begins in the story as a waitress in LA, dating older guys for their money and eventually hooking up with Nikki. Then we find out she's got a rich New York fiancée, but if that's true…what the hell is she doing working as a waitress in LA, dating older guys and hooking up with a man-whore like Nikki? This film never makes even the vaguest attempt to explain or justify any of that.Spread isn't aggressively horrible. Heche gives a nice performance and looks even nicer without any clothes on. Ultimately, though, it's not funny or clever and you never think or feel anything about what happens in this movie. Skip it.

Spread is just basically a film where Ashton Kutcher gets to show-off and gets around to seeing a lot of pretty women fleshed and taking advantage of them. Its a sex comedy with enough sex and not enough comedy nor smarts to deliver. The movie sets its tone in the first few minutes with Ashton (Nikki) reading his first line while walking around. "I don't want to be arrogant, but I'm an incredibly attractive man," he informs by his dry narration – he ingratiates himself into the lives of rich older women to gain access to good clothes, fine food and luxurious living.The film and its characters were very odd and weird. Nikki was very monotone and did what he wanted. Anne Heche (Samantha) was way generous towards Nikki, and it starts by their introduction. It seemed to fake and unrealistic. The film starts out rough in its first 30 mins then gets slightly better. The first half of the film is more of a sex-com with the adventures that Nikki takes involving Samantha. The 2nd half of the film involves Heather a waitress who Nikki eventually gets and stays with. This half becomes more of a rom-com and this is where the film goes downhill. In the second half, Samantha isn't in the film (except in the last 5 mins). The script and plot were just dumb and not great, the movie just falls apart and the film gets boring. Its a rather different Hollywood film.Another thing with the film is that Kutcher's performance wasn't all that great and he wasn't really believable as the gigolo. Also the clothes he's showing wearing are pretty silly (colourfull clothes and suspenders) Lastly, the ending was actually pretty weird and depressing, though not much. The audience didn't really care much about him in the first place and the ending showed that. But it still have should ended better. The last few minutes ends with Nikki speaking and picking up a mouse and making his toad eat the mouse. It sets like that for the last 5 minutes until the screen went black, its pretty bizarre. But before that it showed that he didn't end up with neither girl (Heather or Samantha). The film has its moments but not many, and they should have added more comedy. It really isn't a funny film and I don't think it was really trying but the trailers showed it out to be a romantic comedy. The movie was pretty bad and could have been much better.

Nothing new here. A story that happens ever day to people that you won't particularly care about. The first half is slow moving soft porn and the second half is devoted to watching shallow people live shallow lives. People doing the same thing over and over again and yet somehow expecting different results.If you can get past that everything else was adequate.I just don't see why they would assemble all those people and all that talent to tell us a story about people that were neither bad enough nor good enough for anybody to even take notice of.Rent something else.

This film is about a guy who seduces women in order to live from them. He was a parasite who didn't even had a job in his whole life. I think that the producers didn't take advantage of ideas like these (Even if there was too little to take advantage in the first place).A friend of mine rented it and told me that this was a comedy. Even in this site is advertised as a "sex comedy". The result was the most insipid movie in the history of film making. But even if it was a drama, it would have been awful too. It wasn't focused, there weren't any concrete ideas in this film and painfully lacks direction. I was bored to tears right pass the middle. The movie went nowhere and it's a shame because it had potential to be a decent comedy, but the directors and producers didn't have a clue of what they were trying to make.The acting was bad, but the awful script and direction were the real trouble here, so I will be a little less hard about the actors and actresses. What is intolerable is the way they portrayed women. This was the most sexist movie I've ever seen by far. It was actually far worse than Iron Man, which I think had the first place in objectifying women before I saw this one. Some of the characters were successful women with good jobs, lots of money, pretty houses, etc. and you might think that they are strong, independent and self confident enough to be smart when it comes to relationships. The fact is that this movie shows us those women as miserable persons that had such a low self esteem and self respect to fall for the (unlikeable) protagonist of this film. They support Kutcher's character beyond reason, even if he violated their thrust. I know that there dumb people in the world, but this was too much.This film would receive a lot more attention for its offensive style towards women if it wasn't incredibly boring. The fact that it is almost unwatchable is enough to make it a disposable film. The final "redemption" was poor too. Overall, this film led to one question: why would a normal person wear suspenders all the time?. Stay away at all cost.