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As sweet-natured and unsure as its heroine, "Win a Date With Tad Hamilton!" is a nice but inconsequential romancer that superficially addresses celebrity worship as a young West Virginia gal snags an evening with her favorite movie star. A warm embrace of broadly but humanely sketched characters plus some scrappy casting of rising young stars led by an incandescent Kate Bosworth help overcome the half-realized comedic situations. Date movie will bring young couples in out of the January chill for strong returns, followed by sweet times in ancillary.
With this follow-up to his first feature, "Legally Blonde," director Robert Luketic is starting to corner the market on comedies centered on lovable if ditzy blond beauties. While Bosworth's Rosalee Futch, a naive, fetching supermarket clerk momentarily seduced by Hollywood, isn't the memorable creation summoned by Reese Witherspoon, she refreshingly recalls a more innocent style of romantic comedy recently shoved to the sidelines by the gross-out showboaters. And for fans of Bosworth's charismatic surfer chick in "Blue Crush," her softer side here reveals a young thesp with more than one dimension.

Rosalee and her best pals Pete (Topher Grace) and Cathy (Ginnifer Goodwin) watch an imagined Hollywood romance titled "A Good Man Is Hard to Find" and starring No. 1 heartthrob Tad Hamilton (Josh Duhamel). The gals are in tears and Pete checking his watch. Assumption that Hamilton is as nice off screen as on is abruptly contradicted by a cut to Tad indulging in a scandalous night that becomes tabloid fodder.

Tad's agent and manager, both who are named Richard Levy (distinguished in credits as Levy the Driven, played by Nathan Lane, and Levy the Shameless, played by Sean Hayes), nervously sense the need for their top client to regain his clean-boy image. They come up with a contest whose prize is a trip to Los Angeles and an evening with Tad.

Meanwhile at the Piggly Wiggly in the West Virginia town of Fraziers Bottom, Rosalee works with Cathy at checkout; Pete impresses as manager but can't manage to tell Rosalee he loves her.

Both girls enter the contest for a date with Hamilton and Rosalee wins. Her arrival at the movie capital bears as little resemblance to the actual L.A. as pic's depiction of West Virginia bears to the actual state, and the movie's overall phony sense of place (lensing was entirely, and all too obviously, in Southern California) depletes the comic energy and contradicts story's extolling of genuine feeling over false fronts.

The date itself is a gently depicted meeting of a hunk who's in love with his own self-image and a distinctly non-city woman who's a bit tongue-tied but has a sharp built-in b.s. meter. Rosalee clearly leaves an impression on Tad, who later impulsively shows up at the Piggly Wiggly to continue things with Rosalee.

Pic is at its wobbliest in the midsection which shifts attention to Pete and his increasingly raging heart. Bosworth's Rosalee moves offscreen in favor of Pete's crisis, and Victor Levin's script struggles over the dramatic humps until a third act in which Grace's irony-tinged perf as Pete begins to deliver some effective emotional notes.

With immense good looks and the right, polished airheadedness, Duhamel is an inspired choice in his feature debut as a B.O. superstar. Grace doesn't overplay Pete's contrast to Tad's Olympian star appeal, and his line deliveries are superbly timed, even if the whole characterization verges on becoming terminally forced.

As Bosworth's sidekick, Goodwin inserts some daffy touches, although the fact that her Cathy also adores Tad suggests a seemingly natural clash with Rosalee that's never realized.

Lane and Hayes leave only a faint comic impression as symbols of Hollywood cynicism, while Gary Cole as Rosalee's dad and Kathryn Hahn as the local, love-wise barkeep steal their respective scenes.

The bright and cheery look that distinguished Luketic's "Legally Blonde" seems misapplied in this country/city tale, especially combined with the continuously inauthentic settings.

Pic stands as yet another puzzling example of how Hollywood regularly fails to depict itself accurately, while bending over backward to avoid hick cliches. Edward Shearmur's underscore is the most subtle in a while for a youth-oriented comedy.

A DreamWorks Pictures release of a Lucy Fisher/Douglas Wick production. Produced by Wick, Fisher. Executive producers, William S. Beasley, Gail Lyon. Directed by Robert Luketic. Screenplay, Victor Levin.

Rosalee Futch - Kate Bosworth
Pete - Topher Grace
Tad Hamilton - Josh Duhamel
Richard Levy
the Driven - Nathan Lane
Richard Levy
the Shameless - Sean Hayes
Henry - Gary Cole
Cathy Feely - Ginnifer Goodwin
Angelica - Kathryn Hahn

ROBERT KOEHLER Variety 4 January 2004

The year was 1913. Hattie was a Nebraska farm girl about to turn 21.
Desending from the Haggarts of Clan Ross of the Scottish highlands and" Blue Bellied Yankee's" she was about to prove up on her homestead in WY..
She recalled as a child being held back and having to watch her home burn with her cats in it. Hattie also remembered her dad who was off working on the rail road bringing home a new china Platter for her Mother holding it in his lap so it wouldn't break because the wagon road was so rough. She sometimes talked of his dying when she was nine years old.
Hattie was aggravated with her big brothers for not hooking up the buggy for her when she wanted to go to Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. So, she hooked up the horse and went by herself. She told me once after that she always dreamed of owning a cabin in the pines.
Her eyes would light up when she recalled riding the Emigrant car to WY. She saw the train caboose ahead of her when coming around a horse shoe bend!
As a single young women she remembered helping butchering flocks of Turkeys with her friend Clara to be put up for winter. She and Clara cooked for the sheep shearing crews in a camp below the Hamilton Hills and slept under the stars listening to the coyotes.
As a bride she would get out of bed in the middle of the night to go out her corrals and beat the coyotes off the sheep with a club. She recalled when changing a diaper jumping on a saddle horse bare back and going after the cowboy who was stealing her milk cow calf. After discussing his pedigree with him she brought back the calf.

Hattie hated pushing the Model A up through the 77 Hills. Hattie grieved over her brother in law being bushwhacked in those same hills after a winning large at poker.
she was sad that her first fiance' died in France during WW II.
Hattie knew every word of:

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders Fields.

Take up your quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep,
Though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

She felt clever at being able figure out where her son was in the Pacific. He mentioned his rope in a letter. (Manila/hemp). I found receipts in her trunk for war bonds from both wars. A time when money was in short supply.
Hattie didn't care for sixties rock but I do recall her doing a little dance to Red Wing. The sixties were confusing to her but she was proud of two of her older Grandsons who went to Viet Nam.
Later after that war she bragged about me calling her from Okinawa when I was in the US Navy.
Hattie baked the best bread and lemon pies that I have ever eaten. Her fried chicken is untouchable.
She never wore trouser or drove a car and others described her as always a lady. She wore her best dresses and always wore a hat except in the worst of the winter when she wore a head scarf when going to town,
Hattie never had electricity or running water but every Monday we hauled water in from the back yard wind mill, heated it on the wood stove in a copper boiler and she washed clothes in a gasoline ringer washer. Sheets first Levis last.
Hattie passed away in the spring 1986 at the age 93.

I still long to visit with her after supper as she rocked in her chair and patched clothes by the stove. In the predawn hour I knew that I would wake to the sound of stove lids rattling as she built a fire for breakfast.
She was a daughter, homesteader, wife, mother,grandmaw and patriot - in short - one hellva strong woman!