200 Cigarettes and 20 Dates

These scenes with Samaha are among the funniest, along with Berkowitz's interview with screenwriting guru Robert McKee, who, in an empty Royal Theater, offers Berkowitz some curt assessments of his character and chances for success. The moments with the women yield mixed results. There is a hilarious sequence of Berkowitz trying to impress a thrill-seeking date by bungee jumping with her, and some apparently genuine courting with a woman to whom he eventually becomes engaged, but we never quite shake the feeling that this film is not on the level.

For one thing, all the women look like models and are suspiciously tolerant of Berkowitz's behavior. Some are amazingly good-natured when he springs the truth about the film crew lurking in the background, although there is one early scene in which Berkowitz's date sits crestfallen upon hearing the news about their dinner. A sickening feeling of having participated in someone's humiliation creeps over us during this awful moment, forcing our conflicting attitudes toward candid-camera culture to the surface. We may all be voyeurs in some sense, but watching this woman's wounded reaction reminds us of our own complicity in the erosion of privacy. (In a later scene, one of Berkowitz's dates becomes outraged, leading, he implies, to a physical altercation, although we never witness it; Berkowitz claims, in his film, that his experiment earned him two lawsuits.)

There is much about 20 Dates that recalls Albert Brooks' old Saturday Night Live films -- sardonic meditations and sendups that displayed a citric, self-deflating personality. But this film also reveals Berkowitz as a defrauder of trusting, vulnerable strangers, which, in the process, leaves us feeling a little exhilarated, but also a little dirty. You feel that Berkowitz will probably end up with that film contract but, like February 30, intimacy will never arrive for him.

200 CIGARETTES| Directed by RISA BRAMON
GARCIA | Written by SHANA LARSEN | Starring BEN AFFLECK, CHRISTINA RICCI, COURTNEY LOVE and
PAUL RUDD | Produced by BETSY BEERS, DAVID GALE and VAN TOFFLER | Released by Paramount | Citywide

20 DATES | Written and directed by MYLES BERKOWITZ | Produced by ELIE SAMAHA, MARK McGARRY and JASON VILLARD | Released by Fox Searchlight Pictures | Sunset 5 and Mann Criterion