Take Care is a 2014 romantic comedy
written and directed by Liz Tuccillo, and starring Leslie Bibb and Thomas
Sadoski. The film is a charming and offbeat romantic comedy, about a fairly
simple story about an injured woman who gets her ex-boyfriend to care for her
out of payback for her nursing him during his cancer.
Frannie
(Bibb) is a woman who is recovering after getting hit by a car, with a broken right
arm and left leg. She is house-bound, stuck in a fourth-floor walk-up, and
while she has her friend and sister for occasional help, she is often
struggling on her own to make a meal, go to the bathroom, or just get around
her home in general. She says of her friends’ appearances to help, “Sure, here
and there, when they can fit me in. But I’m not anyone’s priority.” She can be
childish, and is described as “dramatic” by her ex-boyfriend, but Bibb is
likable and charming in her performance, so that overrides the immaturity of
the character.
Frannie
often feels lonely in her home and needs more consistent help, so she resorts
to contacting her ex-boyfriend, who her friends have called “The Devil” for
dumping her after Frannie took care of him for two years while he had colon
cancer. Thomas Sadoski as Devon delivers
a good performance, but Devon is an unlikeable character like Frannie. He is
bland and dull, and often has a wishy-washy attitude when it comes to both
Frannie and his jealous girlfriend Jodi (Betty Gilpin). While he knows that he “owes”
Frannie for what she did for him, he often seems awkward and unsure of himself
throughout the movie, and doesn’t have much of an attractive personality to
justify why either woman would be interested in him.
Through
this arrangement, Devon regularly comes to Frannie’s apartment to buy her
groceries (he had recently gotten $6 million for a software deal with Yahoo),
cook her dinner, take her to the doctor, wash her hair, and spend time with her
watching T.V. Her favorite show is Law
& Order, and there is a fun running joke with Frannie and the reruns. “I
can see the murder in the first minute and I know who did it . . . it calms me
somehow.” Those moments are some of the highlights of the film, which has an
otherwise thin script.
There is
an entertaining subplot with Frannie’s neighbor, a guy who blasts dance music
in his apartment and does CrossFit. He often is dragged into Frannie’s life,
whether it is carrying her up the stairs or her making him come over to make a
sandwich for her, and so forth. He is a normal guy who wants to be left alone,
and doesn’t want anything to do with her problems. “When someone asks me to do
them a favor, it feels like they’re sucking air out of my lungs, like they’re
trying to steal my life.” His aggravation with Frannie’s self-involved drama is
often a funny diversion from the main plot, and showing an entirely different life
outside of Frannie’s world.
Jodi is
often made the villain of the film, and her jealousy and own neediness often
makes her more of a caricature, rather than a woman who has every right to be
uncomfortable with her boyfriend spending a lot of private time nursing his
ex-girlfriend back to health. Gilpin delivers a good performance, but her
character is definitely made to be over-the-top in her whininess.
The
movie is light and fun to watch, mostly because Bibb and Sadoski has a nice
chemistry together as exes and burgeoning cordial friends. Even though the
outcome of their relationship is predictable, the scenes where they are bonding
over his cooking and her love of Law
& Order are warm and nice to watch, like seeing old friends
reconnecting. It is a movie that would work as a one-hour play, as most of the
action takes place in Frannie’s apartment, and the actors seem mostly suited to
working in theater and television. It is a nice movie, not great, but pleasant
to watch for an offbeat romantic comedy.
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