The filmmakers couldn't decide whether to be funny, poignant, real, or over-the-top.
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It sounds like "Porky's" or "Bachelor Party," but "Blind Dating" tries to be a lot sweeter and gentler romantic comedy. It also tries to be a lot of other things, and therein lies the problem.
Well, one of the problems. Watching "Blind Dating" won't kill as many brain cells as some of the pap that comes to DVD, but in the end it's still a pretty by-the-numbers movie that has as much trouble with its identity as young Danny (Chris Pine) has finding a woman.
Danny's brother, Larry (Eddie Kaye Thomas, "American Pie"), runs a limo service and picks up extra cash by renting the back to hookers, who service their clientele while he drives around the city. And this is the person a nice guy like Danny trusts to set him up on a string of blind dates? Literally. Danny has been blind since birth, and while the film starts out kind of off-beat, showing Danny's normal sibling rivalry and his unwillingness to be affected by his disability--we see young Danny running down a park hill full-tilt and smacking into a tree, for example--by the time writer Christopher Theo gets us to the actual meat of the narrative, cleverness gives way to clichés and we lose the family interaction and believable writing that made the first 15 minutes worthwhile.
From the moment that a blind dating montage is introduced, showing one disaster after another, it's all downhill. When Danny meets a receptionist at a doctor's office where he's going for tests in order to participate in an experimental process, nice-girl Leeza (Anjali Jay) is introduced. They connect (of course), but much too quickly, given the fact that this Indian woman is going through the process of an arranged marriage and had an initial reaction to Danny that was something like finding a hair in one's mouth. There are moments between them that reminds us of the potential the film showed in the early going, but ultimately we feel like we're in the back seat of Larry's limo, not knowing where this film is going to take us. That sounds like a good thing, but it's not, considering that the limo makes brief stops on the sets of "White Men Can't Jump" (we see Danny and his black friend hustling big, mean-looking guys on playgrounds), "Charly" (when Danny's operation gives him a window of hope), and "An Affair to Remember" (as the film's downhill run has it slamming into hackneyed melodrama that tonally is 5000 miles away from the engaging, witty, and offbeat film we saw in the beginning).
The title and DVD notes suggest the focus will be on the blind dating, but that only forms a small part of this film. "Culture clash" is also suggested, but I'm not seeing it. She explains to Danny that she's Indian and that he doesn't know what that means, she can't go against her parents' wishes. But when she does, you'd think there'd at least be a reaction more typical to Indian parents who not only are watching their daughter hook up with a non-Indian, but also suffer the public embarrassment of a broken betrothal. Yet, the two parents just smile benignly. Huh?
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