Well, it’s officially Freddie Prinze Jr. week here at Stale Popcorn. Yes, I am a huge fan of Freddie, but we can’t deny that my man starred in a steady stream of CLUNKERS in a quick succession. Clunkers aren’t always a bad thing. I loved Boys and Girls, which was the focus of yesterday’s issue, but I had plans to write about today’s feature ever since I conceptualized this newsletter in the first place. It immediately came to mind as I had just watched it recently but couldn’t remember a single detail about it. That must mean it’s a great one.
Today, we’re going to talk about Down to You, another 2000 Freddie romcom, costarring Julia Stiles and featuring Rosario Dawson, Selma Blair, Ashton Kutcher and Henry Winkler, among others, in the cast. Down to You features a couple, Al (Prinze) and Imogen (Stiles) who give a flashback-laden present-day cross narrative about the history of their relationship as each other’s first loves. It is the only theatrical film directed by Kris Isaacson, who has gone on to do such things as make a TV movie with Matt LeBlanc. It currently sits at a 3% on Rotten Tomatoes, and like I said, I can’t remember a thing about this movie and I think I’ve seen it three times. Well, fourth must be the charm, so let’s get into it.
In a coffee shop, Al (Prinze) breaks the fourth wall to tell us the story of his first love, Imogen (Stiles). They met in college at a bar that didn’t check IDs, a classic love origin story. Al and his goofball friends Monk (Zak Orth) and Eddie (Shawn Hatosy) are at the bar and Eddie wants an audition in one of Monk’s movies, but in order to do so, he has to take a freshman Lana (Rosario Dawson) home. I think Monk makes porn. Monk tells Al to go talk to Imogen, who is at the jukebox. He flirts with her over her selection and they dance to “Groove is in the Heart” awkwardly. A guy named Jim Morrison (Ashton Kutcher) who looks like Jim Morrison from The Doors gives Imogen a shot and leaves.
Lana tells Imogen she’s leaving with Eddie. Al confesses to Imogen that he wants to be a chef and that his father Ray (Henry Winkler) is a famous chef that Imogen and her mother admire. She leaves and Al sits alone. He is approached by Cyrus (Selma Blair), an amateur pornstar who is looking for Monk. She thinks Al is in the porn business with Monk, so I guess I was right. Al buys Cyrus an old fashioned and she asks Al to pass a package off to Monk. She goes to sit with Jim Morrison who has like a big seafood tower but with eggs on it. I don’t get this character. Did Jim Morrison eat egg towers? Any Doors fans wanna sound off in the comments?
On his way back to his room, Al opens the package and sees Cyrus gave Monk a Ben-Hur porn parody. Al hides the VHS when he sees Imogen running up to him to hug him, telling him he’s the cutest boy in New York. Maybe, I don’t know. We cut to Imogen in the present, also breaking the fourth wall to discuss the rush she got from hugging Al. She explains she wanted to be free to have fun outside of a relationship in college, but upon seeing Al, she knew she would have to date him. FPJ was a heartthrob after all.
Al and Monk later discuss the Ben-Hur porn parody and discuss true love. Al goes to see Imogen in her dorm and he admires all of her artwork. They discuss their aspirations versus their parents’ expectations, as well as their family lives. Imogen offers to psychoanalyze Al and Al discusses his first kiss being from an older woman when he was a preteen with a Novocain-numbed mouth. Imogen mentions that her first kiss was a jerk in gym class when she was eleven. They discuss their high school relationships. In present-day voiceovers, they each tell us how comfortable they were together and we see a montage of their date. Cute. Love when they just tell us the movie.
Two months later at Al’s house, he introduces Imogen to his parents while he cooks with his famous chef father. His mom (Lucie Arnaz) takes to Imogen immediately and tells them they need to pick a song as a couple. Later, Imogen suggest a Master P song which would have been cool. They decide on “Let’s Stay Together” and dance to it in a student center or something. I don’t know. The whole lot of students around cheer for them.
On a filming of Chef Ray’s show, Ray draws the spotlight on Imogen, complimenting Al on having such a nice girlfriend, and she seems a little embarrassed but happy about being accepted. For Al’s birthday, Imogen brings Al to an art gallery and wears a solid all grey outfit. They discuss art and kiss. Later they confess their love for each other and finally have sex. Their present-day voiceovers discuss their sexual compatibility. They also discuss how Imogen has an upcoming summer in France and how she does not want to leave but Al insists it’s only a couple months. On what seems like a porn set with Monk, Cyrus, Eddie, and Lana, Al is discussing how in love he is but Monk gives him a challenge where he fails and now Al has to be an extra in one of Monk’s porn movies. He tells Al he will lose the illusion he has of love soon enough. Al tells Imogen he has to do the movie and Imogen is upset and storms off from the store, making a “have your cake and eat it too” joke about the cake on the counter, since they seem to eat cake after they have sex. This is a weird movie.
On the movie set, Al is upset with himself that he chose the movie and runs off to Imogen. She’s happy he arrives and they have a slow-motion sex scene set to “Black Balloon” by Goo Goo Dolls, the sexiest song of all time. I hope they had cake. In the present, Al reminisces about how moments like that can never be matched, and you don’t think it at the time, but you’ll never be that happy again. When Imogen goes to France for the summer, something happens with their relationship. They reunite at the airport and there’s some awkwardness. When they start getting intimate again, Al is upset that Imogen keeps her eyes open when they kiss. Their chemistry seems to be wearing off. Present Imogen describes how fun her summer was, but notes that at one point, her cousin in France asked if she and Al were to be married, which she said no because she’s nineteen, but upon being back with Al, she got hung up on the thought of marriage with him. I guess we’re seeing Imogen’s initial desire, to be free to have fun and date around, surfacing in the face of actual commitment. Sounds an awful lot like a FPJ feature I wrote about yesterday, don’t you think?
At a restaurant, Ray discusses his desire to have Al join him for a father and son reality cooking show that seems to be a parody of Cops, but they bust into people’s houses at gunpoint and make dinner for everyone in the house. I really wish this show aired; this seems like something I would have loved. Easily the highlight of the movie so far. Al isn’t as on board as I would be as he wants to study French cuisine. He confesses to his dad that he and Imogen are having issues, and Ray tells him to work at his relationship or leave it.
At a picnic, there is tension as Cyrus flirts with Al. Imogen and Al leave, driving drunk, and Imogen crashes the car into a tree, a scene they seem to treat very lightly which is in pretty poor taste. They take this as a sign to start their relationship over and it seems to be working. On a walk in the park with Monk, Al discusses that he and Imogen are having a great relationship while we see a montage that seems to disagree with his words. Al says they fight, but it feels good to make up, and he still gets the “tingles” that Monk warned him would wear off.
We see Al get rejected for sex because Imogen is tired and this causes him to spiral, having a nightmare he is on The Man Show and being ridiculed in a homophobic diatribe by Jimmy Kimmel and Adam Carolla. Imogen has her own nightmare about carrying a baby through the dorms and seeing Al as an old man. She fears she’s pregnant and has Al get her a pregnancy test. They argue over this possible obstacle. Al wants them to get through it together but Imogen needs time to herself.
It seems Monk is moving up in the world as he’s throwing swanky parties. While Imogen goes for a drink and speaks to Monk, Cyrus flirts with Al in front of a large box of pancake mix. She tries to seduce him and asks him to make pancakes for her, but he rejects her. Jim Morrison is sitting on a bed smoking looking like a weirdo and somehow, he charms Imogen with his dumb Jim Morrison posturing. This is hands down the worst part of the movie. Ashton Kutcher has played some terrible roles, but this one is just dogshit. Imogen has agreed to design Jim’s album cover (? Is he doing a cover album or is he a totally different artist with the same name as Jim Morrison?) and Al is hurt by this for some reason. Al confronts Imogen about Jim and Imogen calls Al an old man and tells him he’s a hypocrite about Jim because he has naked pictures of Cyrus under his bed. She says she hates him and she leaves the party.
The next day, Imogen comes to Al’s apartment and tells him she slept with Jim Morrison after the party. Damn, Al, by letting the paranoia of that takeover your behavior, you willed it to happen! She cries and he cries and kicks her out. Present-day Imogen says it was a mistake, but she just wanted to feel free and honestly, I get that. She decides to leave and start over. She breaks up with Al tearfully, confessing she can’t find the happiness they had anymore.
She moves to San Francisco to finish school while Al graduates. He tries to get advice from Monk to handle the depression he’s going through, but Monk has become some kind of motivational speaker or something and is too busy so their friendship ends. Al ends up drinking a lot in his room and makes a backstory and has a fake conversation with a spider, so he's clearly doing great. The spider somehow kicks him into gear and he begins dating again, with disastrous results of course. We get all the late 90’s/early 2000’s bad date cliches. In his voiceover, he states his choices were limited despite being in fucking New York City, but whatever. He starts dating Cyrus but doesn’t make her pancakes. He tries going to the Culinary Institute but drops out because food “doesn’t taste the same” anymore, so he’s clearly depressed. He resolves to go bar hopping with Eddie because apparently that’s all that’s left in life. All of this stuff also happens in like a minute and a half. They really rush through the actual meat of this movie. Why can’t we get forty-five minutes of Al suffering?
In Al’s new studio apartment, he looks over trinkets from his relationship with Imogen and drinks heavily. He resolves to drinking a bottle of Imogen’s shampoo in an attempt to kill himself. Man, I hope Al gets the help he needs, this got really dark really quickly. He ends up hospitalized and his parents visit him. His mom has a sick Phish hat and his dad wears an amazing sweater. Over a psych evaluation, he confesses that he did this to try and rid himself of his feelings. The analyst implies she wants to treat him so she can exploit his story for her next book, which seems to be a violation of patient-doctor confidentiality.
Upon release, Al goes to a swanky party with his parents and meets Eddie’s new girlfriend who is a fan of Shark Week on Discovery in the year 2000, so she is clearly way ahead of her time. Monk and Al make amends and I’m really curious why Monk and Eddie are at this swanky party. Monk says his new book is coming out soon, and the movies are making money, so he seems to have a lot of success in a short period of time. Monk explains to Al that it’s not the “meaning” of life, but the “feeling” of life, making a metaphor about a nearby park saying there have been a ton of happy and sad events in that park, but that park is Al’s and he has his whole life to walk through it. Monk walks away and it seems Al is ready to move on, so of course Imogen shows up immediately.
They take a walk and discuss Imogen’s success in San Francisco as a book cover artist. She confesses that she fears one day running into Al on the street and having to make small talk. They walk and talk the whole night and she confesses she’s leaving on a flight in two hours. They go talk by the fountain and the dialogue is painful. They mention that the sun is coming up soon like eight times. Imogen abruptly hails a cab and gives Al a gift and tells him to open it once she leaves. She hugs him and departs. Al opens the gift and it’s a book called Down to You with them on the cover. Hey! That’s the movie title! You all know how much I love it when they say the name of the movie, but this is even better. It’s on a book cover! But wait, there’s more! Imogen never got in the cab?! Wha-wha-what?!? She’s still here! She made a tribute to their love in art form and she stayed. They discuss how they’ll make this work and kiss.
We find out Al moves to San Francisco and gets a job at a four-star restaurant to stay with Imogen. In a scene mirroring Al’s birthday surprise earlier, he lip-syncs to Barry White and they dance. And that’s our movie. That’s it.
I don’t know about this one, folks. I feel like the chemistry between Julia Stiles and Freddie Prinze Jr. really fluctuates the entire time. Henry Winkler and Rosario Dawson are great, but Ashton Kutcher’s character is just a mindfuck. I don’t think this deserves a 3% per se, but I don’t think it deserves more than, say, an 18%. Even a nation in the midst of Freddie Fever couldn’t help this one make its budget back and it was a flop. It really is a forgettable film. They cram way too much of the drama into way short of a time but the weight just isn’t there. I don’t expect this couple to stay together, but they do because that’s the story they sold us back then. You can see for yourself. This one’s currently streaming on Paramount+ in all its 3% glory. Don’t say I didn’t warn ya.