My Date with Drew

Brian Herzlinger is not a stalker. Really, he’s not. He’s just your average guy, soggy love handles and all, who sacrifices much of his life and time to tracking down Drew Barrymore and landing a date with her. Despite the fact that he calls friends of friends of friends, he sneaks into movie premieres with fake passes and takes advantage of Circuit City’s lax return policy, Brian Herzlinger wants to assure us that he is not the same type of person who is now rotting in jail for pulling similar stunts with Jennifer Aniston, Madonna or Angelina Jolie.

Although charming at times, My Date with Drew comes across as more than a little bit creepy given the present context of celebrity stalkers – not to mention the sight of a middle-aged man fawning over the portrait of a young child. Yes, he sets the picture up as being one from his youth when he was Drew’s age, but it’s still a little gross as the picture is brought up again and again.

Herzlinger is a struggling filmmaker with little money to his name. He lives in Los Angeles and has a few friends with some connections. Taking $1,100 he won from a B-game show, he sets out to land a date with Ms. Gertie herself, Drew Barrymore. The catch is he’s only got 30 days – the amount of time he has to return the video camera he “bought” from Circuit City.

My Date With Drew is a live-action version of “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” minus the Kevin Bacon. A lot of the film is dedicated to Herzlinger and his peers cold calling friends of friends of friends of clients’ cousins just to get a little closer to Drew. Herzlinger even goes to such lengths as making fake press passes to get into movie premieres with hopes of bumping into his childhood crush.

If the film were all about Herzlinger’s quest, it would come across as little more than a guy trying to make a name for himself. Thankfully a lot of My Date with Drew sets out to make Herzlinger into Joe Regular, an everyman setting out to conquer the impossible – land a date with the girl who’s way out of his league. As a guy, it was somewhat easy to connect with Herzlinger on some levels. He’s shy, awkward, lacks the Hollywood good looks and has very little prospects for his life. He’s a nice guy with a sense of humour. He’s easy to like. Therefore, the film is pretty easy to watch because it’s easy to relate to him.

Still, there’s little beyond the clever reality show-feeling concept to really make My Date with Drew worthwhile. Despite Herzlinger’s likability, there’s just too much of a “hey, look who I know” kind of attitude to the whole thing. It’s a film that takes our society’s celebrity worship and splashes it onto a movie poster like there’s no harm to it. Even if Herzlinger isn’t a stalker, he still hinges his livelihood on an encounter with someone who is famous. Sure, he struck gold by having a movie made out of it, but it could encourage others to pull similar stunts.

Ultimately, My Date with Drew is a one-note pony that offers little other than some charm and tips on how to crash celebrity gatherings. The moral of the story is that people are people, whether they star in big summer blockbusters or they sell themselves to get in front of them.