If you watch the trailer of this film you might think, like I did, that this is going to be a fun comedy film. Not really. The premise, how in the victorian era the treatment for the female medical disorder condition known as Hysteria (now called HORNYNESS) was for the physician to perform massage to the genital area in order to achieve 'hysterical paroxysm' (known today as orgasm), had the potential for a complete 'hysterical' comedy of laugh-o-meter epic proportions. The makers of this film instead chose to turn it into another stupid romantic comedy. The film has its brilliant moments though. All the scenes involving the almost unrecognized Ruppert Everrett's character, the genius who accidentally invented the world's first vibrator, are awesome. Any time this scientific marvel is on screen is pure gleeful time. Unfortunately the film focus mainly on the relationship between the young doctor, Hugh Dancy and the 'beautiful older sister' liberated woman Maggie Gyllenhaal (to be honest whoever thinks this actress is beautiful must be shot. Felicity Jones, who plays the younger sister is indeed a beauty, not MG). In a nutshell this a great premise that didn't deliver because of the director chose to make another idiotic romantic comedy. 6/10 <IFRAME height=315 src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/tZAxFLaXT_M" frameBorder=0 width=560 allowfullscreen></IFRAME>
I still cringe every time I watch The Dark Knight scene where the Joker tells Rachel (Maggie Gyllenhaal) "Well, hello beautiful...you must be Harvey's squeeze...and you are beautiful." I always think that the writer had in mind the previous Rachel, Katie Holmes, who is better looking than Maggie Gyllenhaal and was supposed to reprise her role before Tom Cruise intervened preventing it.
Or maybe he meant the Maggie Gyllenhaal from the film Stranger Than Fiction. You know the one who was actually kind of hot and hadn't seemed to age 25 years in the span of two. Maybe that's also the Maggie the producers thought they were getting as well, but were too shocked and too kind to turn her down during try outs.
