Hitch: Blu-ray disc DVD Review

The new romantic comedy "Hitch" stars Will Smith as a consort of sorts for the dating challenged, those awkward souls who have never learned the art of winning someone's heart, no matter how hard they try.

Smooth and irresistible, his clothes as tailored as his smile, Hitch has the hook-up, all right. After years of making his own mistakes with women and surviving a broken heart, he has pulled a Mel Gibson and learned what women want. Now it's his business to tell men what women want. With one exception, his clients are mostly a well-meaning group of men finding it difficult to have a successful dating life in Manhattan.

They need Hitch's help and the good news is that Hitch is full of advice. He urges his clients to become better listeners, to be more attentive, to put some effort into their attire, to wax their backs if necessary, to learn how to dance, to be less eager to make a move toward the bedroom.

Big into research, Hitch encourages his clients to discover the likes and dislikes of those women they're interested in dating before the date - not after it - to facilitate conversation. And how do you do that, you might ask? Google them, for God's sake. As for that crucial first kiss, let's just say it's best not to cut right to the tongue.

The film, which Andy Tennant based on a script by Kevin Bisch, is Smith's first romantic comedy and he pulls it off seamlessly, making his role look deceptively easy as the story unfolds with the addition of Albert (Kevin James), a chubby wreck of a junior executive who is in love with Allegra (Amber Valletta), an allegedly unobtainable heiress who happens to be Albert's boss.

Complicating matters is Hitch's own budding relationship with Sara (Eva Mendes), a steely newspaper gossip columnist whose job it is to write about people like Allegra. Since Allegra and Albert don't exactly make sense to the outside world, Sara takes notice and the film's plot forms a noose, with everyone here eventually having their necks stuck through it in ways that won't be revealed here.

The first two-thirds of "Hitch" are the movie at its best. They're fun and brisk, gently guided by formula until the third act succumbs to it. All of the actors are well-paired, with Smith and Mendes playing characters just hardened enough by life to be interesting and compatible; Smith and James forming a brotherly bond that's natural, not forced; and James and Valletta somehow fitting together in spite of a world that would prefer they didn't fit at all.

"Hitch" is being marketed as "the cure for the common man," as if men were a virus. While that's certainly true for one of the film's characters, a client Hitch drops because he turns out to be a womanizing pig, the movie doesn't demonize men so much as it tries to understand them and nurture them. Dating is difficult. Relationships can be tough. "Hitch" wants to be the Band-Aid that heals the wound.

Grade: B