Missed Connections (2012)

I checked out Missed Connections tonight at The 2012 Sarasota Film Festival Day 7. Missed Connections was co-written and directed by Martin Snyder on what he described before the screening as a shoe-string budget.

To set up the film in the simplest of terms, like three words – this indie feature is best described as (drumroll please) Girl Meets Boy. Adding a little more of a structured description, which was sent to me by Mickey Sumner’s press agent, we have:

Josh (Jon Abrahams) is a cocksure techie working in a corporate I.T. department when he meets Lucy (Mickey Sumner), an up and coming lawyer looking for Mr Right. When Lucy encounters a handsome stranger outside of the office, she decides to place an ad in an online Missed Connections site in the hopes of finding true love. But when Josh intercepts the message and, with the help of his friends, undertakes a plot to steer Lucy into his own arms, things get complicated in a hurry. MISSED CONNECTIONS is lighthearted fun, a truly independent comedy for the age of online romance.

Got all that? How about a bit more?

Mickey Sumner as Lucy

Lucy (played by Mickey Sumner), is a tall and willowy blonde. When we meet her at a New York law firm called Milstein Gray, she and a gal pal are discussing their misfortunes in recent dates. Seems that neither has had much luck of late. Lucy talks about this rotten state of affairs, or lack thereof, with a rather intelligent and memorable line of thought, which includes ‘… the soft bigotry of lowered expectations…‘.

In short, Lucy hasn’t expected much from the guys that she’s gone out with recently. And the guys have definitely lived up, or is it down, to those expectations.

Jamie Belman as Peter

But Lucy is on the move. She’s transferring to London , and she’s only got a few days left. Then, with her belongings packed into a box, she leaves the office, and bumps into this well dressed, and sophisticated guy Peter played by Jamie Belman) – only no names and no numbers are exchanged. But there was a strong attraction on both sides.

She calls her friend and describes the event. Then the friend says why not post to ‘Missed Connections’ a website where messages like “…Saw you on the 4 train heading uptown Thursday at 700 PM. We made eye contact. You were in a navy suit, and I was wearing a black track suit. You got off at 86th street. Please contact me.”

Or in this case, “We collided in a revolving door on Tuesday. You helped me find a cab.” Only this time, Lucy didn’t post the message herself, but her BGF Tess Wright, played by Julia Jones (above), did from Lucy’s computer.

Jon Abrahams as Josh Lindsay

Meanwhile, a few floors down in Milstein Gray, there was a rainbow coalition of an IT team. A white guy Josh – Jon Abrahams, a black guy Jules played by Malcolm Barrett, and an East Indian Punjabi Sikh named Pradeep, played by Waris Ahluwalia. Routinely, they made service calls upstairs to replace keyboards or mice, install software, or make recalcitrant computers more amenable to being functional.

Waris Ahluwalia as the hip-hop IT guy - one of the terrible trio of players

They also routinely sent disruptive mini-programs to all the pretty or hot girls’ computers in order to get a service call so they could chat the girls up in their offices while doing the ‘repairs’. Their activity also included inspecting emails and monitoring web activity, meaning they spied on the women, nominally to protect the firm, but more accurately – they were on the hunt for – pardon the indelicate term that I quote from the film – pussy.

Anastacia Ganias - one of the office hotties (Claire) who made a lot connections at Milstein Gray

At this point, I’ll refer you back up to paragraph 3 above, so you can refresh yourself about the plot.

This film is so very new that IMDB says it is still in post-production. It took me a while to find the images that I’m using in this review. So hopefully this review will get the news out – this is an adorable film.

Descriptive terms like: Indie, shoe string budget, lack of big names – all of them are true and accurately reflect the film. But don’t think for a minute that this isn’t a very entertaining film.

Josh is about to teach Lucy how to ride a bike. Lucky she has the helmet on.

There were a lot of laughs, decent music, and some nice turns in the script. The actors were often amazing in that they made you believe in them as well as root for them. Even if you found the actions of Josh Lindsay, as one of the hyper-horny IT guys, reprehensible, his inner good guy fought the good fight and didn’t stay hidden.

And Mickey Sumner as Lucy, who was also in the house in Sarasota tonight for the film showing, managed to give you more than a few tugs on your heart-strings.

I’m going to give the film a three-point seven five out of five, as well as recommendation. At the moment, there’s no release date scheduled but for sure, this showing on Day 7 of the Sarasota Film Festival, was good for the film. The audience was talking in very positive terms as we filed out. The universal term was that the film was wonderful. Hopeful the good news will reach many ears.

So, do yourself a favor and watch for it.

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