All the Real Girls (2003)

Ever gone to a non-chain coffee shop & saw some ridiculous hipster using a typewriter & wondered what he/she is working on? This is it. Terrible dialogue that a horrible hipster was patting his/herself on the back about. Danny McBride is in it, so that's cool.

Paul (Paul Schneider) hangs out with his friends Tip (Shea Whigham), Bust-Ass (Danny McBride), and Bo (Maurice Compte) in their small town. Paul is known as the town's ladies' man. He's been with every girl but only in short flings. Tip's sister Noel (Zooey Deschanel) comes home after boarding school. Noel is a virgin and thoughtful. Paul falls for her but Tip does not approve.I don't really buy Schneider as this character. He doesn't fit but an indie can have casting problems like this sometimes. It is still very distracting. On the other hand, Zooey Deschanel is wonderful. It's a slow touching romance. The central conceit of Paul is tough to overcome. This is still a nice indie with some charms.

In an attempt to draw mainstream attention and garner distribution deals, most independent films hide a rather saccharine, Hollywood plot beneath their gritty exteriors. "All The Real Girls" is no different, with its formulaic "boy meets girl, boy loses girl" plot, and its central rights of passage, in which our promiscuous hero learns the value of trust.What's different here is the film's aesthetic strategy. Directed by David Gordon Green, "Girls" subdues its central plot, dimming it down to a mere whisper. Green then foregrounds his environment, a derelict, North Carolinan mining town, and inserts many improvised moments and sequences, using a visual style comprised almost entirely of intuitively snatched shots. The result is a fairly poetic film which conjures up the works of Terrance Malick, Cassavetes and early Nicholas Roeg.Actors Zooey Dashanel and Paul Schneider play our young lovers, and like the rest of the film they ooze a certain rawness, a certain quiet sincerity. The plot they're stuck in, however, isn't up to the pretensions of Green's aesthetic. At its worst, "All The Real Girls" is as formulaic, small minded and contrived as any Hollywood romantic comedy. At its best, however, it's a moody little film, which preaches the importance of trust and the far reaching, painful ripples caused by, not only infidelity, but thwarted expectations. Specifically the expectations placed on men by women, a message Green conveys by mirroring the film's lead couple, a promiscuous guy and a virginal girl, with the Lothario's mother, a woman whose life has been damaged by a string of men who all abandoned her whenever the times got tough.End result: the film advocates growing up, caring about the wider ramifications of your actions, and living up to your responsibilities. After this film, director David Gordon Green would proceed to do the opposite, selling his soul to work on juvenile Hollywood sex comedies, some of which are underrated and covertly espouse the same values as "Girls": be responsible, compassionate and love your fellowman.8/10 – See "The Truth About Tully". Worth one viewing.

David Gordon Green suffers from a strange problem, in that his films have almost all been critically praised, but no one goes to see them. They are hard sells, in that they are hard content. People die, hearts get broken, and the scenes are honest to the highest degree. In 2000, his debut "George Washington" started his career which would be developed into a string of Southern Gothic art house films in the vain of the great Terrence Malick. No one watched it, but it was later released on the Criterion Collection.For his second effort, Green collaborated with Paul Schneider, a friend and actor for the script "All The Real Girls". Another small-town love story from the perspective of a depressive American eye, it was again seen by little to none upon release. Now, with the the build up of his career and films since, Green is on the brink of finding a new audience."All The Real Girls" is a piece of the career's of every person involved. Paul Schneider has gone on to rave reviews in such films as "The Assassination Of Jesse James By The Coward Robert Ford" and "Lars & The Real Girl" and seems to have a long career ahead of him. Zooey Deschanel is this decade's Parker Posey, being in so many films it's hard to see them all, and teaming up with indie rocker M.Ward to form the musical duo She & Him. The film also was the debut of new popular comedy star Danny McBride, who went on to roles in "Tropic Thunder", "The Foot Fist Way", "Hot Rod" and Green's own "Pineapple Express".As for the content of the film itself, it has to be one of the most honestly heartbreaking romantic films of recent years. It does not suffer from the clichés of many romantic comedies of today, yet they be the ones which lean more into comedy with a romantic back story or the ones which rely more on the expectations of romance. It is photographed beautifully and well-acted by all involved. It stands today as possibly Green's finest work, and should not suffer the lag it has.