Head Over Heels

Head Over Heels" is a mess. It starts off as offbeat romantic comedy with Amanda (Monica Potter), a fish out of water, thrown into a pool of sharks -- her four supermodel roomies, Jade (Shalom Harlow), Roxana (Ivana Milicevic), Candi (Sarah O'Hare) and Holly (Tomiko Fraser). Their goal is to get Amanda a man until, suddenly, the flick morphs into a rip-off of Alfred Hitchcock's "Rear Window."\nWhen Amanda agrees to pay $500 a month for what is essentially a closet, she enters a world where men hang around the front door of the gorgeous models' home in hopes of getting the privilege to lavish money upon them. As the five become friends, the models take on a quest to find Amanda the man of her dreams. This turns into a "Peeping Tom-asina" tale when Amanda and her new buddies spy on a handsome, fashion executive-neighbor, Jim Winston (Freddie Prinze Jr.). \nAmanda gets weak in the knees when she finally meets Jim. At this point things twist, and Amanda believes she has witnessed a murder by her new love-interest. The police, of course, find nothing and treat Amanda and her girlfriends as a bunch of bubbleheads. The girls decide to forgo the police and begin their own investigation of events. But this becomes muddled as we lose sight of "the murder."\nThis mess of a story is attributed to a committee of writers -- John J. Strauss, Ed Decter, David Kidd and Ron Burch -- and it shows in its scattershot approach to the disjointed material. Two of the hacks responsible for "Head Over Heals," Strauss and Decter, contributed to "There's Something About Mary," and bathroom humor pervades the whole tale, mostly in poor taste. \nPotter is pretty enough as Amanda, but her good looks can't help her get around the horrible script. The camera loves to look at her close-up, and she suffers the least from the bad writing. The four women playing Amanda's roommates are a quartet of good-looking ladies, providing ample eye candy. \nDirector Mark Waters shoulders the burden of responsibility for "Head Over Heals" and should do what he can to place blame elsewhere. There is little, if any, chemistry from the behind the camera crew to help lift the leaden script from its doldrums.\nThis is one of the worst flicks to come out of Hollywood this year. Mr. Waters has a lot of learning to do before he can really call himself a filmmaker.