"Frank and Penelope" is a gender-twisting little film that desperately wants to be a Quentin Tarantino film, and takes its queues from several of them. As we begin, Frank is coming home to his wife, and catches her in the act of screwing another man. He drives away and goes to a strip club, where he meets stripper Penelope. He falls for her packaged sweet-talk (she is, of course, a "movie stripper" who doesn't come with a time-zone of actually stripping), and after saving her from her nasty boss, the two of them drive away. They start on a road trip, but end up meeting up with a very odd family and things go downhill from there...
The biggest problem with "Frank and Penelope" is that I never for one second cared about the two titular characters. Billy Budinich's "Frank" turns on a dime from a heartbroken husband to a wife-beater wearing cool guy, and we're given no reason to be engaged with him. Caylee Cowan is drop-dead gorgeous as Penelope and spends most of the movie in sexy outfits, but she talks in a Barbie-doll voice and is literally given zero character beyond that she's really hot, and her reaction to every situation is to flirt and act sexy (which somehow causes whoever she is dealing with to become a drooling cartoon character). And despite what some characters try to convince us, we never believe that their relationship is anything beyond Frank having the hots for this gorgeous stripper and Penelope just messing around. And that drags the film down. The story is also a bit all over the place, and in a movie like this the plot needs to be tight -- in this flick, we are left hanging on the fate of several characters (including a couple of important ones), major plot lines are just ended suddenly, etc.
"Frank and Penelope" is a gallant effort, but it just doesn't succeed. Based on the ending, it's clearly intended to be first of several films, so maybe the next time will be more successful.
The biggest problem with "Frank and Penelope" is that I never for one second cared about the two titular characters. Billy Budinich's "Frank" turns on a dime from a heartbroken husband to a wife-beater wearing cool guy, and we're given no reason to be engaged with him. Caylee Cowan is drop-dead gorgeous as Penelope and spends most of the movie in sexy outfits, but she talks in a Barbie-doll voice and is literally given zero character beyond that she's really hot, and her reaction to every situation is to flirt and act sexy (which somehow causes whoever she is dealing with to become a drooling cartoon character). And despite what some characters try to convince us, we never believe that their relationship is anything beyond Frank having the hots for this gorgeous stripper and Penelope just messing around. And that drags the film down. The story is also a bit all over the place, and in a movie like this the plot needs to be tight -- in this flick, we are left hanging on the fate of several characters (including a couple of important ones), major plot lines are just ended suddenly, etc.
"Frank and Penelope" is a gallant effort, but it just doesn't succeed. Based on the ending, it's clearly intended to be first of several films, so maybe the next time will be more successful.