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Visitors Review

stevepat99 2013-05-12 07:27:19

The romantic comedy that wasn't....

Okay, I'd watch the movie just to see Rebecca Hazlewood who sparkleswith zest and beauty in every scene.First, the movie description correctly notes that Amir and his cousinZara team up to fool friends into thinking they are dating. We are thenled to believe this is a 'romantic comedy' which it is not.The audience is led down a false primrose path suggesting that dare Isay 'romance' is in the air when romance is AWOL from this film. Whatis in the air is unrequited love which is hardly the stuff romanticcomedies are made of.There are many ways films handle this type of 'walking the line' storyi.e. fantasy scenes, dream sequences and/or flashbacks. Another, usedhere, is the 'drunk' scene. What really happened? Did they??? Werethey?? Are they?? Sadly, a suggestive scene used to further lead theaudience astray.I'd vote for the apt title: 'Joking Cousins' albeit here the joke isalso on the audience.On the plus side one can and should watch this movie for the 'joke'played so well by Amir and Zara. Chuck the misleading title (there kissor even kisses have nothing to do with romance), have no expectation ofany real romance and give the movie a shot. The otherwise pleasant castand humor are worth it.

jeffiscomedy 2013-05-07 19:00:34

Absolutely hilarious

finally a smart funny movie that hasn't been "done a million times"!all the characters are super hilarious and the main girl totally smokinhot. great movie. so glad i heard about it. if you're a fan of indiemovies, you'll love it. if you're all about goofy whacky comedies,you'll love it. David Alan Grier and Jaleel White are awesome. I wonderhow they got those guys??? anyway, I'd recommend this movie to anyone.and i really liked the way the Indian family was really just an allAmerican family who happen to be Indian. They celebrate Thanksgivingand Christmas like everybody else, but they do it with a little easternflare. Very cool. And I'll say it again... the girl in this movie is totally hot!

2013-05-07 01:58:21

Super funny quirky movie!

This movie was awesome. It has some Indian flare to it, and had me cracking up through the whole thing. Very clever story and witty lines throughout. Why wouldnt you watch this! Great flick overall.

Playbahnosh 2013-04-28 13:56:52

This movie is wrong on so many levels...

...but it's awesome on so many levels, too. I have very mixed feelingsabout Kissing Cousins. It threads on very thin ice, both morally andemotionally. As the title suggests, the movie has cousins kissing init.That alone can deter or even disgust some people. On the other hand,the acting is great, especially Rebecca Hazlewood who gives anoutstanding performance despite the lousy script.The story itself is a risky venture into the taboos and sensitive partsof today's relationships. Break-ups, friendships, old wounds, fears,desires, misconceptions and forbidden love, it's all in there. It wasan awesome movie, it was progressing beautifully and...it just ended.Yes, my main problem with Kissing Cousins: it's unfinished. I waswaiting for some epilogue, some moral lesson, some closure, but itnever comes. Poof, credits. I know it's left to our imagination whathappens after the "final" line is said in a movie, but there is no"final" line here, something is missing.The script is full of holes and unexplained, undetailed things. It'slike the movie is missing some scenes. The only thing saving this moviefrom the gutter is the idea. It boldly goes where no big romance storyhas gone before, but ultimately fails to deliver the final word. I'mquite sorry about that. But if you want to see a great love-story,watch it, you won't regret it.

2013-04-28 12:16:36

A Great Romantic Comedy

Saw this at the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival last October and I absolutely loved it. The comic bits were hilarious and the leads really delivered. Samrat Chakrabarti deserves more leading roles and Rebecca Hazlewood should be a starlet. Adding to the laughs are Jaleel White, Gerry Bednob and David Alan Greer. Brilliant casting.If you're still not sure, check out the trailer.

2013-04-06 05:53:15

Awesome movie!

I saw this movie during an Asian American Film festival in San Francisco in 2008. I've been waiting for it to come out since the day I saw it and I'm happy that it's finally released. It's a great film and has an awesome story line~! Best watched with friends or with a loved one on a Friday/Saturday night.

2013-04-05 22:05:01

I do not recommend this movie

This review is from: Kissing Cousins (DVD) My problems with this movie are threefold. One, Amir (the main character) is a "relationship termination specialist", which is fine if as an actual job prospect suicide-inducing, but he takes a picture of every single person whose relationship he terminates, usually in the middle of said person's breakdown, and the reason for this is never explained. Possibly Amir has some sociopathic tendencies, or possibly the scriptwriters need to realize that "quirky" and "possibly a sociopath" are not quite the same thing, and maybe if the audience members are left to their own conclusions on that matter the script could do with some tightening up. Also Amir never gets punched in the face in the various montages in which he takes pictures of grown men weeping like children while their feathered and chained handcuffs are returned to them from their SOs, and that is ridiculously unrealistic. Hell, even if we conform to the stereotypes and an eighty-year-old grandmother is one of Amir's unlucky "dumpees" on bequest of a client, even SHE would probably punch him in the face if he was taking a freaking PICTURE of her having her HEART DESTROYED. C'mon now. And Amir is smug and unfeeling enough in some of those montages to deserve it.Two, Amir's cousin (who he thinks he is in love with) is not a good person. She is very flirty (sexually flirty) with him, and that's fine, because regardless of what this movie claims THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH FALLING IN LOVE WITH YOUR COUSIN (that will be addressed further in my third problem with this movie). She decides spur of the moment to lie to all of Amir's friends (smug married she calls them, and they are, as well as lacking in any real depth throughout most of the movie, though Amir's best friend shows some real depth at the end, albeit briefly) so she pretends that she and Amir are dating. However they develop a very close bond (they previously hadn't seen each other for twenty years) and Amir and his cousin both clearly grow to like each other (Amir more so, if only because he is the main character and we get his POV primarily) and after a party in which they "make out" under some mistletoe at the prompting of his coupled friends they both go back to his apartment and, drunk on eggnog and other alcoholic beverages, make it to at least 2nd base, possibly 3rd, at the prompting not of Amir but primarily of his cousin. Their "romance" ends when Zara (Amir's cousin) freaks out the next morning, tells Amir several different times that it's "gross" and "wrong" to have a relationship with one's cousin (at one point Amir tells her he's in love with her which freaks her out even more) and then they go back to Amir's parent's home for Christmas and Zara gives Amir a framed picture of the two of them with the word "cousins" along the bottom. Her justification for acting like she returned Amir's affections is this: You were such a cynical bastard I wanted to make you fall in love with me to prove that you could still feel, and then I broke your heart to prove even more that you still had one. Pretty messed up and WRONG. You don't need to make someone who is already emotionally damaged fall in love with you just to prove that their emotions still work, nor do you need to break someone's heart to prove to them that it exits.My third problem with the movie -- two cousins falling in love isn't wrong. It's culturally ignorant (and therefore very american) to assume all societies think two cousins in love is "gross". British culture (and Zara is British) by and large does not take issue with cousin marriage at all. First cousins can get married there with barely any fuss (OBVIOUSLY THERE WILL BE EXCEPTIONS). Likewise Amir and Zara and their extended family are from India, another country where marriage between cousins is not uncommon, abnormal, or morally depraved. Even in the United States there are several states where it is LEGAL to marry your cousin, and most of them are actually the NORTHERN states (it is illegal to marry your cousin in BOTH Alabama and Arkansas fyi).The movie overall wasn't absolutely horrible but it was very far from good. There were cameos from the actor who played Steve Urkel, Amir's BFF starred in an episode in the TV show Cold Case and one of Amir's apartment friends was the cop in the movie Jumanji. Many of the supporting characters (minus Amir's coupled friends, all caricatures) were quirky but in a real-to-life way, and there was some actually ethnic and cultural diversity, as opposed to white guys and girls 1 2 3 and 4 and token black/indian/asian guy or girl.The movie, frankly, lacked three things. Compassion is the first, because real love between two consenting adults is not something to be treated like an abomination if even the two adults are first cousins; a good ending is the second, because the movie completely fell apart two thirds of the way through, never actually resolves anything (to do that a romantic relationship would have to be taken seriously and treated as though it were valid) and nearly unravels the GOOD two thirds of the movie; realism is the third, real adult life is messy and the situation between Amir and his cousin should not have ended with Zara saying GROSS like a six-year-old girl running away from cooties, Amir's friends alternatively saying "gross", laughing at him, and looking at him like a desperate freak for falling in love with his cousin, and Zara getting back together with a man from England we never get to know who serves no point in the plot whilst Amir hooks up with one of his friend's sisters, a character who is wholly unconvincing and unattractive while the actress herself slurs most of her lines and acts alternatively drunk or high throughout most of the movie (what a catch!)I didn't need a happy ending to this movie (aka Amir and Zara dating like any other couple). I just needed to see the GIGANTIC ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM addressed, or NOT addressed but like ACTUAL HUMAN BEINGS would do, as opposed to the movie falling apart because of the obvious squeamishness of all involved. I am left wondering only one thing. What the hell was the point of this movie?

2013-03-25 10:11:02

Totally agree with Roxanne F's review

While I did enjoy the movie in a low key way, I found everything Roxanne F said in her review to be true. And the ending was badly done. I felt as if Amir was thrown with the friend's sister, sort of like a teenager being made to attend a dance with his mother's friend's icky daughter. The problem wasn't the actors themselves, but the writing.

jdogsides 2013-03-25 00:04:19

Sweet with a Twist of Curry

A very sweet romantic comedy with an original plot. Jaleel White ishilarious and Rebecca Hazelwood is a doll. This unpredictable comedy isa must see because it not only delivers the fuzzies of a romanticcomedy but also some uncomfortable filial squirms. I've followed thisdirector for some time because of his independent short films,including call center and little man. He brings the same keen eye forhumor and pathos to this film as he did to those award winning shorts.I understand that he is now working on a short called the crossing,which I can't wait to see. I think Kissing Cousins will be the film tobring this director into the mainstream and up to the big leagues interms of big budget comedy.

2013-03-18 02:16:05

Hilarious - really great movie

I saw this in an independent film festival in NYC. It was hilarious. The two leads are great and totally hit on some cultural themes with which everyone can empathize. It's a great romantic comedy, perfect to watch with your girlfriend. The guy who played Steve Erkel and David Allen Grier were both in it too and were non-stop comedy.

planktonrules 2013-03-17 19:50:32

Rough but well worth seeing.

"Kissing Cousins" is a far from perfect film. In places, it's a bitrough and I would have liked to see these rough patches smoothed a bit.However, the overall package is very enjoyable and the film is wellworth your time.The story begins with Amir doing his job--breaking up with people. Inother words, he is a professional who, for a fee, will do the dirty jobof breaking up when one person in a relationship wants out! You soonsee that in addition to this job, he's a very jaded single 30-somethingguy--and it looks as if there's little, if any, chance he'll have anysort of relationship in the future. This doesn't seem to botherhim...at least on the surface. However, when he goes back to see hisfamily at Thanksgiving, he meets his old cousin and she, slowly, hegivens to fall for her. What happens next? Well, it does NOT go whereyou'd expect--and that's one of the best aspects of the film. Inaddition, it has a nice gentle sense of humor that is pleasing andmakes this is nice date film. As for the rough patches, references tomasturbation and some brief nudity might also drive away someviewers--and these easily could have been removed to make this a morefamily-friendly and date-friendly movie.Finally, a few observations. First, Amir's friend, Charlie, might seema bit familiar. This handsome guy played 'Scut Farkus' in "A ChristmasStory"--you know, the ugly bully. He was quite good in the film.Second, the film was both written and directed by Amyn Kaderali--andthat's pretty impressive. Third, while this might creep out some,cousins marrying is widely accepted...just not here in the US. I ampretty neutral about the subject myself (especially since geneticproblems resulting are pretty much a myth) and it IS very common inIndia and many other cultures. Fourth, pay attention to the Japaneselady at the table during Thanksgiving--I really, really liked to seethe translation for what she said. Enjoy.