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Alfie meets Queer Eye for the Straight Guy in this romantic comedy of errors. Will Smith’s Alex Hitchens is a professional pick-up consultant who helps his uncouth clients win over their dream dates. His latest project is an obese accountant (Kevin James, from TV’s King of Queens) who yearns for a blue-blooded heiress. All seems well until an attractive gossip columnist (Eva Mendes) starts snooping for a scoop on the date doctor. Much of Hitch has an artificially old-fashioned feel: the newsroom banter and the sappy dialogue in scenes with Mendes sound cribbed from a Cary Grant movie and out of place in the picture’s yuppie milieu. Still, what the film lacks in depth it compensates for in its well-played slapstick. Smith’s improvisations are reliably fine, but it’s the oafish James who steals the show. (120 minutes)
BY MATTIAS FREY
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