Spread

Ashton Kutcher and crew answer questions from the audience  

EGYPTIAN THEATRE, PARK CITY  

I'm now awaiting the dimming lights of my fifth screening of the day.  It's amazing how doing little other than seeing movies all day can completely wear you down.  Today I had five films.  Tomorrow I have six.  That's going to be interesting, since two of them are back to back in completely different locations. We'll see how my sprinting skills shape up against the thin air of 6,000 feet someone like myself who lives at sea-level is unaccustomed to.  Part of the Sundance experience.  

Before landing myself here at the Egyptian I caught the world premier screening of "Spread," a new comedy from director David Mackenzie starring Ashton Kutcher and Anne Heche.  Seemingly inspired by the tradition of classic films like "American Gigolo" and "Shampoo", "Spread" follows the trails and tribulations of a sexual grifter working to sleep his way to wealth and success.  It's not a film that breaks any new ground, but still manages to provide for a really enjoyable, eh hem, experience regardless.  Rising to the top only means that you've got further to fall.  Ultimately it's a comic love story that was surprisingly decent.  I'll admit that I went into it with incredibly low expectations, but the experience was really quite enjoyable.  There's heart, but don't expect anything terribly deep or insightful.  Kutcher feels all too at home in this sexually charged role, but pulls it off in a believable way.  And I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that it's likely the film's going to get cut a bit more before any kind of theatrical release in order to land an R rating.

Now I await the screening of "Dead Snow."  Undead Nazis are patrolling the theater and posing for pictures as we speak.