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Little Black Book
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MPAA Rating: PG-13
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Entertainment: +2 1/2
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Content: -1
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Stacy Holt (Brittany Murphy) dreamed as a teenager of working for newswoman Diane Sawyer in this dark, romantic comedy. As an adult, she settles for working at a sleazy talk show for host Kippie Kann (Kathy Bates). When Stacy suspects that her boyfriend, Derek (Ron Livingston), has not been honest with her, she takes a look at his little black book, actually a Palm Pilot. With the encouragement of her co-worker (Holly Hunter), she looks up her boyfriends exes and then uses her position at the TV studio to interview them. She is initially jealous but then finds herself becoming friends with one of the girls. Stacy begins to feel compassion for her new friend as she sees her love for Derek. She also gets more entangled in her own web of deception until she finds herself as a guest on the very show she works for being forced to tell all on live TV.
Starting at a slow pace, this film becomes more interesting as the pieces of the puzzle come together. Little Black Book deals with issues of honesty in dating relationships. Instead of confronting her boyfriend with her suspicions, Stacy chooses to go behind his back, lying in order to get information and giving in to her friends peer pressure, which leads to moral depravity. At one point, Stacy says, God is punishing me. She suffers humiliation when her lies are exposed and shows remorse for her behavior. When she does the right thing, her situation improves but not without a lot of pain. The film presents some lessons in statements like luck is when preparation meets opportunity and life does not always go as we plan. Little Black Book has a mildly positive message, but Preview does not recommend it due to several occurrences of bad language, sexual humor and an overall distasteful and mean-spirited tone.
Preview Reviewer: Alan Boyer
Distributor: Columbia Pictures
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Summary
The following categories contain objective listings of film content which contribute to the subjective numeric Content ratings posted to the left and on the Home page.
Crude Language: Several (7) times mild (hell 5, damn 2)
Obscene Language: Few (3) times mild (moderate (cr-p 1); strong (s-word 2)
Profanity: Several (5) times moderate (G 5)
Violence: Few times mild (some shoving and pushing on talk show, a woman destroys an answering machine with a hockey stick)
Sex: None
Nudity: Few times mild (women seen walking around the house with underwear exposed, woman does somersault and exposes underwear, woman briefly shows cleavage in small halter-top, small picture of woman wearing thong bathing suit shown briefly)
Sexual Dialogue/Gesture: Few times mild (woman mentions that she has had sex numerous times with previous boyfriend); moderate (woman puts vibrating palm pilot down pants for sexual pleasure)
Drugs: Few times mild (smoking tobacco)
Other: Unmarried couple appears to be living together, lying and deception occurs many times, woman goes into doctors office and is seen with legs in stirrups getting a pelvic exam with no nudity, medical discussion about female anatomy, doctor promotes a book called Keys to Your Vagina, dog flatulence used for humor
Running Time: 105 minutes
Intended Audience: Older teens and Adults
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