Videovista have my review of David Mackenzie’s Spread (a.k.a. Toy Boy).

Trapped somewhere between romantic comedy and a warts-and-all indictment of life on the Hollywood fringe, Mackenzie’s film garnered a good deal of festival buzz thanks to the presence of Ashton Kutcher and the insider-y nature of the subject matter.  Kutcher — whose career received a sizeable boost as a result of his relationship with the older Demi Moore — plays a pretty young man who lives off of older women.  On paper, this film promised a lot and initial reviews were strong but once the collective hysteria of festival season faded, so too did the film’s buzz and reality soon reasserted itself.  A reality of muddled tone, indifferent scripting and lack of sociological bite:

I suspect that these variations on the traditional romantic comedy theme are intentional and that, by breaking with generic tradition, the film is trying to make some wider point about the way in which we think our lives are going to follow these grand romantic arcs but, while Spread hints at this sort of deconstructive agenda, it ultimately fails to explore any of these themes meaning that the film comes across as broken rather than deconstructed.

All in all: Not nearly clever enough.