Film Reviews

Swinging with the Finkels

• Rating:
• Director:
• Starring: Mandy Moore
• Details: UK/84mins 16

There's a point in this misjudged, awkward comedy (?) when former tween singer Mandy Moore swaps saliva with sardonic ex-Have I Got News For You host, Angus Deayton. Even typing those words makes me feel like I need a shower, so imagine what actually witnessing it does to your sensitive psyche. That horrific moment aside, this is a terrible film that can't figure out its arse from its elbow.
Martin Freeman is an initially affable (eventually grating) middle-class husband to Mandy Moore's fashion designer. He is inexplicably bored with his wife, and because he is bored, she seems bored. What do bored married couples do? Swing! Well, although the film seems ostensibly built around swinging, the actual ordeal is brief, happens once and is neither funny nor sexy. As the film plods along, we meet another couple - Jonathan Silverman and Melissa George - who we manage to care even less about than the first one.
There is no articulate way to put this: Swinging with the Frinkels is utter shite. It manages to get progressively more annoying as it goes on, and is one of the most generally inept productions to make its way to an actual cinema in some time.
Mandy Moore should be a character in an episode of Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, because her casting here should be listed in crimes against cinema. She's not awful, just awfully cast. That seems to be a trend here, too; extremely attractive women married to annoying guys.
This will be around cinemas for a few days and then disappear, but that image of Moore and Deayton will stay with you for years afterwards. For that reason alone, it's best avoided.

Review by Mike Sheridan