What really makes this movie worth watching are the characters. (Which almost happens at the end, where because of a misunderstanding she apologizes for something she didn’t do, but it manages to redeem itself a bit after.) These are all positive attributes about a movie where it would have been all too easy to make Emma look like the villain for wanting to know more about the man that she’s dating. Emma herself lays it all out for Jack when he comes to apologize. After their relationship is discovered, her boss, Cybill (Laverne Cox) has a very heartfelt conversation with her asking if she consented and reminding her that it will make her job tougher than it already was, because no one will think she earned anything by merit. Emma’s friends are continuingly pointing out that she doesn’t know anything about him he’s shown even avoiding relatively harmless questions. What I liked about the Can You Keep a Secret movie is that it acknowledges all of these issues. I think it’s because the film makes it relatively easy to see why Jack is interested in Emma, but it’s more difficult to see why Emma is interested in Jack – other than superficial reasons. He eventually stops this behavior, but it left a bad taste in my mouth for a while.
He already holds that power over her, and now he knows intimate details about her, and he’s basically using those details to amuse himself at work.
It’s played for laughs, and it bothers me that it’s at Emma’s expense. Oh, yes, he’s handsome and charming, but when he shows up at Emma’s office, he uses the information she told him to make her squirm a bit in front of her coworkers. I’m going to say it: Jack is kind of a jerk at the beginning. (I mean, it sort of is what happens but not really.) What this movie does is present a relationship where one person is more vulnerable than another, and the issues that can arise from that situation. Perhaps it’s because I couldn’t stand the main character in Kinsella’s Confessions of a Shopaholic that I was prepared to be annoyed by Emma, who essentially forces all of her secrets on a person she doesn’t know and then gets mad when he doesn’t reciprocate. Interestingly, that didn’t happen with Can You Keep a Secret. I had a lot of preconceived notions about the movie based on the trailer, and oftentimes those can affect my opinions.
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