Spread (**)

Directed by: David Mackenzie
Starring: Ashton Kutcher, Anne Heche, Margarita Levieva, Sebastian Stan, Ashley Johnson

Seen: March 21^st 2010

** Out of ****

Spread starts interestingly enough; Nikki (Kutcher) telling of his ambitions when he first came to L.A. In short he was planning on becoming rich and sleeping with many beautiful women, and while telling the audience how many fail in this endeavour, he makes it clear that he got all he wanted from his Los Angeles occupation. We see Nikki looking fashionable (not my type of fashionable, but probably some fashion magazine’s cut-out representation…) while trolling nightclubs for women, mentioning that he is looking for something specific tonight, not just another fling.

This something specific turns out to be someone rich-looking, that he can attach himself to and in the process get a roof over his head for a while. Nikki is a gigolo, is unemployed, and does not own a car or a home. He charms Samantha (Heche) into taking him home, and he takes the viewer on a tour through his book of tricks he employs to get to a point where she trusts him. Samantha seems really in love with Nikki, who is obviously only in it for the money, the smart house, the smart car, and nothing else. It doesn’t take Nikki too long to start denting that built-up trust, and before long he is after someone else, Heather (Levieva), a waitress (not his next mark) at a diner. Is Nikki in for a change? For something that might for him become a true relationship; in direct opposition to the vacuous life he has been living up to now? All is not that easy, as Heather brings more complication and realisation to his life than he could have thought possible, or would have wanted. Nikki is so selfish in fact, that he leaves behind a trial of broken people wherever he goes – his best friends Harry (Stan) and Eva (Johnson) basically lock him out, while Heather is the only one who understands him, if only in part. The voice of truth for Nikki also comes from the strangest of places: an invisible extra option, a character that up to now did not have any role to play in the movie – which just goes to show how eager anyone at the right place in life can be for a guiding voice.

Spread has high ambitions, which are only almost reached in a few small moments. In its quest to display the life of a Hollywood gigolo the movie comes perilously close to an adult film during its first half, which is a pity, since most audience members would be lost before the meat of the story is dealt with; either through complete shut-down to possible input the story might give, or through audience members walking out on something that does not meet expectations (which would not be completely unjustified). But then again it is not that much of a pity since the movie does not give a significant enough emotional pay-off during its second half to justify even a bit of what came first. In effect, Spread is more of a futile attempt to celebrate the emptiness Hollywood so often seems to be, rather than an influential social commentary of it. Not a date movie at all, Spread comes close to not being an anytime movie at all.