Prinze Jr. Fails to Achieve His Potential in New Film

Head Over Heels

1 1/2 Stars

Someone should let Freddie Prinze Jr. know that if he wants to be seen as a serious movie star, he shouldn't pick scripts where he's forced to participate in disgustingly infantile bathroom jokes.

The makers of "Head Over Heels" started out with a pretty cool idea -- lovelorn art restorer falls for undercover FBI agent -- but spun it around to remove any promise of originality.

As for the humor, well, that choice diarrhea scene is only the beginning.

Monica Potter plays Amanda, the lovelorn art restorer who moves in with four dimwitted models after leaving her boyfriend and delightedly discovers their window overlooks the apartment of Jim Winston (Prinze).

Jim and Amanda hit it off after a chance encounter, but when she sees him murdering someone in his apartment, she has to investigate before she lets herself fall for him.

Prinze and Potter have great chemistry together, and every scene they share is fresh and believable.

But the beginning and end of the movie have very different feels. The beginning is all lovey-dovey over their burgeoning relationship, but the end focuses on the action of Winston's undercover escapades.

It felt like the undercover thing came out of nowhere, and it was a cool enough idea that it shouldn't have just been tacked onto the end.

Where the movie really sours is with its depiction of the cartoon characters, ahem, supermodels whom Amanda rooms with.

Think about every bad joke you've ever heard about models, multiply it by a hundred, and you'll get an idea of the groan-factor induced by these idiots. The gaggle of models, led by real-life model Shalom Harlow, are ridiculous, shallow and completely unfunny.

Additionally, random and meaningless lesbian subplots, jokes at the expense of the elderly and the aforementioned bathroom humor suck out whatever life this movie had.

The relatively unknown Potter will probably benefit from the exposure of this performance, but it's puzzling why Prinze chose such a vehicle.

He has the looks and the following to do much bigger things, so why is he stuck in teenybopper-ville?

The Arts & Entertainment Editor can be reached at artsdesk@unc.edu.