Men Seeking Women (1998)

A funny movie, signs of Will Ferrells future stardom.

I ran across this movie at one of the local used movie places. Seeing it had Wil Ferrell in it, I thought it would be worth a viewing. 3 friends Les (grant shaud from tv's Murphy brown), Al (Will Ferrell), and Nick (Anthony Palermo) born on the same day in the same hospital, Have spent 33 years as friends, and all have little luck with women. On the night of their 33rd birthday, they make a pack that the first guy to get a woman to live with them for 3 months will win $2000 for each of the other guys. Les, he gets involved with someone who is "on the edge" and falls head over heals for her. Al, well, he's just has horrible luck. And Nick, thinking only of himself) tries to run a scam to get the money for new engine for his Mustang. Over the course of 3 or so month, each of them has ups and downs, and in the end they find out what their friendship was, and truely what kind of guys they are. Les even gets his life in jepardy trying to find love. In all, a fair movie, good story line, and Will Ferrell shows his early signs of greatness in this one. So check it out, not a bad movie, just not a big production, and overlooked because of it. August 14, 2006

Ferrell is gold in this otherwise rather boring movie

Will Ferrell shines in this movie, unfortunatly, I cannot say the same about everything else. Decent to watch, entertaining in spots, the only really good parts is when Ferrell(Elf, Bewitched, Anchorman) dominates the story and screen.

Men seeking women is about three men, who happened to be born on the same day in the same hospital. Grant Shaud is Les,Anthony Palermo is Nick and Will Ferrel is Al. All are close friends, and for almost three years straight now have celerbrated their respective birthdays without any women friends for company. Depressed and lonely, Les decides to institute a bet, winner takes the six thousand jackpot, if one of them can get and keep a woman for at least three months time.

Al is the only one who is decent enough to be relunctant, saying how it feels wrong,and its a dirty thing to be doing but peer pressure will almost always win. And in this case it proved to do so.

Basically this movie is about men behaving rather immaturely, Nick even goes as far as to pay one woman to pretend to be an old college girlfriend of his. Al never seems to get lucky, even though the girls seem to like him pretty well. Must have been the glasses......or those lovely eyes of his when he takes them off.

The best parts of the entire movie again revolve solely around Will Ferrell, such as his garage sale when he tries to raise two thousand dollars.(I love it when he sells off his shirt, the look on his face is hilarious.) Skips out on his date (camoe by Nia Verdalos, My big fat greek wedding) by trying to squish himself out of the small bathroom window. Or gets smashed by his car when another unlucky date trips over the jack and releases the car ontop of him. Oh, and we cannot forget his allergic reaction to Walnut oil. Very humerous.

On the whole, this was a decent movie (terrible music) that could be watched again without seeming to get to boring. But again, thats probaly only because of Ferrell. The problems of the other two just get rather dull and uninteresting after awhile. July 17, 2005

nothing special..

If it was not for Will Ferrell, I would give this movie 2 stars at most. The movie is too predictable and the rest of the cast is not too brilliant. Ferrell, on the other hand, is still as funny and clumsy as ever. Yeah, there were some funny scenes but all of them involved Ferrell. So, if you are a big fan of Ferrell you might like this movie, but if his name does not "ring a bell", than you might find it rather dull and not very funny. December 8, 2003

Men behaving badly

Men Seeking Women is a comedy about three guys, not having much luck with women, engaging in a bet where the winner must obtain a girlfriend and live with her for three months. Whoever accomplishes this first wins the pot.

Grant Shaud plays Les, the instigator of the bet, while Will Ferrell and Anthony Palermo play Al and Nick, respectively. All three are close friends, and, on their 33rd birthday (all three were born on the same day) Les talks them into putting up 2 grand apiece for the bet, money none of them can really afford to lose.

On answering personal ads, all three men have various degrees of success. The funniest being Al (Will Farrell) getting cold feet when meeting his blind date in a restaurant, and trying to skip out on her through a bathroom window.

As the movie progresses, Les becomes entangled in a particularly sticky situation, Nick employs a bit of chicanery to try and win the bet, while Al goes through a series of very funny situations in his quest.

While this may seem like a romantic comedy of sorts, it's more of an episode of Men Behaving Badly. As we get to know the men, we develop an understanding as to why none of them are involved in a committed, meaningful relationships with women. They claim to want what most of us want, but their actions seem to say otherwise.

Will Ferrell steals the movie, providing quite a bit of comic relief, but with a hint of underlying desperation that fleshes out his character nicely. While there are sometimes darker undertones that appear within the movie, I wouldn't call this a black comedy. The superficialities that most people have seem to lie closer to the surface with these three men, especially Nick, and ultimately ruin their chances at succeeding with their relationships with women. There was a line in the movie, when Al and Les are talking about Nick where one of them says, "Nick's world is a great place to live...if you're Nick." I think this can be said of all of them, and really works to illustrate their overall problem.

Soon we see negative effects on their lives, to which the men attribute to the bet, but it appears that the bet only served to amplify negative aspects already present within the men themselves. None of the men appear to be very likable from the start, garnering little sympathy from the audience as their misfortunes pile up, but the ending suggests maybe something was learned as each is forced to deal with the consequences of their actions.

In my opinion this movie is not a romantic comedy, so if that's what you are looking for, look elsewhere. If you are looking for a fairly funny comedy with semi-serious undertones, then rent this movie before buying, see if it fits your tastes. October 6, 2003

Ferrell is funny!

Three guys bet each other to see who can get a girlfriend and live with her for three months. Grant Shaud (of Murphy Brown fame) is the instigator of the bet.

Will Ferrell is a photographer who has some of the worst dates imaginable. Basically, Will steals every scene he's in -- but be prepared, it's totally different than anything else I've seen him do. It's a very understated but hilarious performance.

There's also a very funny scene when one of the guys relates a near-death sex experience.
This is obviously a very low budget movie and it's rough in spots, but it's still pretty funny. My girlfriend actually liked it better than I did.
L7 August 19, 2003

More reviews at Amazon.com ...