I concluded my write-up of the marketing campaign for Little Black Book by saying:

There’s no way around the fact that this is going to appeal to the female crowd tired of a summer of Spider-Man 2 and other action/adventure films or comedies like Anchorman which tend to skew towards males. The campaign isn’t overly original but it doesn’t need to be. Put an empowered female and make her come apart and act like a socially retarded fruit fly and you’re sure to attract the date crowd. Men are advised to drink heavy amounts of wood alcohol in the hopes of incurring blindness.

Allow me to eat more than my fair share of crow. While the movie is by no means “great” it’s actually pretty watchable and enjoyable. Murphy is pitch-perfect as a woman who struggles to overcome her insecurities but who, at the end of the day, just can’t That’s largely because of the machinations by the producer played by Holly Hunter, who gives one of those “she’s just in a completely different movie” type of performances.

little black book

Revisiting the trailer it looks like it pretty accurately sells the movie, showing it off as a quirky romp through romance in the digital age. It’s actually a much better trailer than how I apparently viewed it in 2004, but it seems I went into that column with a bad attitude that colored everything. The movie actually has a quirky vibe that is pretty charming. Murphy never really comes apart as I (uncharitably) predicted in my write-up. Sure, she has some neuroses but what character in what movie doesn’t? Ultimately she carves out her own path and takes control of her destiny in a way that’s totally in line with the modern way women are – and should be – portrayed, realizing that she’s defined by much more than whoever it is she’s dating.