WRITER: Zoe McCarthy
SCRIPT BIO: 14 votes on the 2015 black list
STORY:
Anna is a 34 year old successful urologist. Described as 'lovably neurotic and romantically frustrated'. The writer gives us no clue as to her looks, which is where the terrible writing begins in this awful script.
Even though Anna is witty, fun, clever and successful she can't seem to lock the right one down. In fact, she can't even get a date.
We join her on another 'date' where she's been stood up. She gets drunk and talks herself into a one night stand with a random guy called Eddie.
Back at Eddie's mansion, Anna vomits on his cock. Eddie then dresses her up in a My Little Pony outfit and films her singing the My Little Pony Theme song.
The next day Anna wakes to discover that the video has been put on an ex-girlfriend revenge porn site.
Anna's My Little Pony performance has gone viral.
She's immediately fired (really? All she did was sing the My Little Pony Theme song?)...
Anna goes out to drown her sorrows. She meets Angel (screen writing 101 mistake #2 - don't name your two main characters with the same first letter as it makes the read confusing) - who is an ex-protistute who actually still turns tricks, so not an ex-protitute, but a prostitute (sigh).
Anna invites Angel home, thinking she's just a friend, but after Angel quickly goes down on Anna, she demands 500 dollars for her services.
I could probably stop the story summary here and just write 'hilarity ensues' but that'd be an insult to the word 'hilarity'.
Finally after some seriously bad dialogue, Anna and Angel tell each other everything that the audience already knows (screen writing 101 mistake #3) and they decide to go and confront Eddie as they both have beefs with this punk.
When they get to Eddie's mansion they find him in the middle of an initiation process for his latest arrivals of international models hoping to make it big in America.
Eddie has a model from the Ukraine sucking on his dick, and when Anna and Angel burst in, they startle her into biting Eddie's dick clean off.
Anna and Angel then take Eddie's dick hostage, unite with the Ukranian model and flee.
The trio then use Eddie's dick to ransom him into... well, I'm not quite, sure. Their goal isn't really clearly defined, as I mentioned, this is a terrible screenplay.
I think they want him to apologize for being horrible to women, or something to that affect.
Honestly, the moment I finished reading this script I started to erase it from my mind. It's that bad.
INITIAL REACTION:
Retarded.
Is it politically correct to call a script retarded? Is that okay? Or should I call it story and writing challenged?
There, that's nicer isn't it.
Sheeshhh....
Where to begin with this...
First off, the script doesn't start with our hero - Anna. Is starts in an airport where all the hot models from around the world are getting off the plane and being rounded up by Eddie's henchmen.
Why this is the most important scene to start your screenplay with I have no idea? But there it is.
All these models are from around the world, Germany, Australia etc... the writer later has these models in a scenario where they're standing around waiting to suck a dick to hopefully get their faces on Vogue.
I'm sorry what?
Can you imagine if this screenplay was written by a man? How fucking insulting that is to women? But no, it's written by a woman so sexist stereotypes are a-okay!
Stereotypes - that's one thing this script does really well. EVERY character is a stereotype.
Every character is BLACK AND WHITE. There is no grey area here. No depth to personality what so ever.
The bad guy is really bad for no reason.
The ex-prostitute who is actually still a prostitute plays like a six year old thought her up.
Going back to the 'dumb model' angle here. I'm going to assume that the writer has NEVER EVER MET a model in real life.
Models from Australia and Germany are really savvy. In fact models from all around the world are smart. They're not so desperate or stupid that if a guy put his cock in their face and said, 'suck that and you're next on the cover of Vogue' that they'd believe him.
They'd slap him, walk out, then probably have a sexual harassment case on him before the hour was out.
I understand this is supposed to be a comedy. But there's nothing funny here. It's just plain old stupid.
Enough with my reaction to this drivel... let's break it down...
CONCEPT:
I don't even know what the concept here is. Maybe it's 'Urologist who has been shamed on the internet teams up with an ex-protitute who is really still a prostitute and a model from the Ukraine, not Russia, and cut a guy's dick off, then hold it for ransom.'
Wow.
That's pretty much what we're dealing with here.
I don't need to say anymore do I?
CONCEPT RATING: 2/10
CONEPT TIP: Actually thinking your concept through will help your story no end.
FORM:
Terrible. The writing here is appalling. There are countless words missing. Not even just spelling mistakes, of which there are myriad, but whole words that the writer couldn't be bothered writing.
It's like they wrote it, did one pass, then went, there you go, sell that sucker. It's about women being funny, it must have a market!
It uses BOLD, there's italics in the dialogue, there misuse of underlining in the descriptions.
Oh, and my favourite, the writer loves telling us what the character is thinking.
Right.
'Cause that's easy to see on the screen.
Sigh.
FORM RATING 2/10
FORM TIP: Actually learning the basics about screen writing formatting will go a long way.
STRUCTURE:
What structure?
The writer doesn't understand form, how the hell do you expect them to understand structure?
Structure - as we know - stems from the character's flaw.
Anna doesn't have a flaw here.
I can hear the writer arguing that she has a bad love life and that's a flaw.
NOPE.
It's the consequence of a flaw.
Here, Anna has no flaw. In fact, she's witty, intelligent, fun, successful, pretty much every personality attribute that guarantees you at the very least a date that will turn up.
But no.
For no reason, Anna can't get a date. Which is just poor writing. And being that the writer omitted telling us what Anna actually looks like - even in the most basic form - I'm going to have to assume that she's soooooo ugly no person on earth would want to even date her.
But, that's an assumption as the writer conveniently forgot to tell us anything about her appearance.
The goal here is awful. Get the bad guy to be nice to women, or something like that?
Really not a concrete goal you can set your sights on, let alone try to build your structure around.
Oh, I almost forgot.
Eddie, after having his dick cut off, continues to run around trying to get Anna and her team as though nothing has happened to him.
Excuse me? The guy's had his cock severed. I don't know about you, but having your dick cut off would pretty much knock you the fuck out. Also, there's that problem of maybe bleeding to death?
Wouldn't Eddie's mission be to get to hospital to have the bleeding stopped?
Maybe?
Nah, that wouldn't be funny, let's just keep him running around doing stuff n shit, that'd be way funnier - even if it is completely and utterly illogical.
STRUCTURE RATING 2/10
STRUCTURE TIP: Understanding even the very basics of structure will go along way.
CHARACTERS:
What characters? Oh, you mean stereotypes. Right.
Well, the stereotypes were great here. Every one of these people were a stereotype through and through.
Less thought couldn't have been put into these characters if they were thought up by a drunk mouse with cancer.
STEROTYPE RATING 11/10
STEROTYPE TIP: Don't write in stereotypes.
DIALOUGE:
Why write each character with their own unique voice when you can just use one voice for all you characters?
No brainer right?
Why waste all that time trying to figure out the differences between your characters when you could be, I don't know, thinking up scenarios that aren't funny in the slightest then writing them into a "story".
Please note the use of inverted commas around the word story there.
DIALOGUE RATING 1/10
DIALOGUE TIP: Actually trying to create some sort of a difference between the way your characters speak will go along way.
VOICE:
I'm sorry what?
VOICE RATING: -2/10
VOICE TIP: If your screenplay fails on every front, odds are your voice is going to suck.
That was the case here.
PRODUCTION:
The writer evidently wanted to write a strong female driven comedy.
Awesome. I applaud that.
But what they ended up with is a piece that's overtly degrading toward women, it paints them as complete idiots left right and center.
There no VFX - positive.
Cast is mid range - not bad, not good.
It's a female driven comedy - positive.
It's really, really badly written - negative.
I wouldn't put money into this.
It'd be a 15 mill production minimum.
SUMMARY
This is one of those scripts that if it became a film, you'd see the trailer and think, 'how does shit like this get made?'
This is the film that's sooooo bad it inspires others out there who have never thought about writing a script to start writing as they're sure they could do better.
And they'd probably be right.
OVER ALL RATING 1/10
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