SweetHearts

Arliss (Mitch Rouse), an erotic chocolatier(!), places a personals ad to which Jasmine (Janeane Garofalo), a struggling author (and major loon), responds, and the two decide to meet for a blind date at a local coffee bar appropriately titled The Asylum Café. Jasmine, dressed in black and chain smoking, is the first to arrive, and she plops herself down at a table, pretending to be just a regular, and not Arliss's intended. When the nervous Arliss does arrive, she befriends him, drawing him out as to the kind of woman he is expecting to meet. When she learns he is hoping for a slim, sun dress-clad virginal beauty, she confesses her identity, and begins verbally haranguing him for his bourgeois taste in women. The proceedings turn decidedly darker when Arliss learns that (1) Jasmine is a bipolar manic-depressive; (2) she's packing a handgun; and (3) she intends to use that gun to commit suicide on her 31st birthday, which is just hours away. When Arliss threatens to leave, Jasmine kidnaps him at gunpoint to prevent him from alerting the police, but after a few hours of forced exposure the two develop affection for each other, and Arliss tries to dissuade the determined Jasmine from going through with her plans. This dark, very talky, well-intentioned drama is extraordinarily grating, and far from the wacky romantic comedy its marketing campaign would lead us to believe. While the performances by Garofalo and Rouse are as good as the material they were given, writer-director Aleks Horvat had us wishing that Jasmine would just open fire already and free us from having to sit through another cup of joe with this pathetic crew. (S. C. Sickles)