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Intentionally Cheats by Fausto Lucignani - Comedy - With their family-blessed wedding in trouble, the cherished lovebirds are confident that mutual, premarital cheating can save their nuptials. But things get complicated when they carry out their brilliant idea. 104 pages - pdf, format
Logline misses the clear incident that causes trouble between them…
As is, the logline reads self-contradictory to me
On one side there are words like:
family-blessed wedding cherished lovebirds
…on the other one
wedding in trouble mutual, premarital cheating can save their nuptials
This makes no sense as presented… Why call them lovebirds when they got that crazy idea??? I don't get it… Better address their problems and structure that whole thing differently.
Also, cut the second sentence – the consequence is pretty clear from the former build context, isn't it?
All in all, I feel the potential behind it BUT imo you need a completely new logline, written from another perspective, with a clear description of HOW the conflict plays out, and perhaps (better) put some charm and humor in there…
Unfortunately I must say the title doesn't work as well. Intentionally Cheats hmm… not so catchy or striking to me, it's no title for a 2018/19 movie imo
WHATEVER, that's just my advice on those things and I'm pretty convinced of my view in this case I must say… but let's see how you deal with the SCREENWRITING…
P1 OFFICE – search better name for location –- not a big thing of course but then it's still a bit bland… another-office-on p1- scene1-like
P2 "I'm just forty." A lot of stuff feels not authentic to me. She wants to have a baby and does not know 40 is like the border to at least a "possibly" difficult pregnancy? Even most weird men on earth would know this, but she does not, AS A WOMAN? Plus as a person who sits at a doctor because of the exact topic...? better check that whole part again, and cut as much as possible there…
P3 there's a spacing error between dialogue boxes… Wow pretty heavy on dialogue so far… you got two complete I pages, no single movement in picture
Yep, I believe the scene goes for too long. We don't know her so well yet and so I'm not sure we're so interested in "hearing" so much about her personal everyday problems. I'd rather cut it to what is need to be said and otherwise mainly stay with those funny embarrassing moments addressing gynecology (<those worked well for my taste).
P5 another spacing issue in the dialogue – I don't mind, but others might dialogue's not subtle enough, also too slow again two I pages in a row Shouldn't they DO something within the picture? Moviemakers always integrate some movement into their conversation scenes, be it just a drunken guy falling onto their table or whatever…
At least let them interact: it's a flirt, isn't it?
Sorry, this is not my type of story as it's executed up to this point. The dialogue is expositional, almost only expositional, ; there's NO movement in the picture, you just give me a shot/reverse shot experience of overlong dialogues.
If this is a no-budget kind of script where you aim for an easily doable scenario that keeps production efforts low by going the dialogue route – then this should be better, more focused, sharp, shorter, quicker… with a top characterization and context/subtext flying around from all sides
If you'd give it another go and especially cut the hell out of it, I'll look into the script again for sure. Sorry, to be not more positive here. There is an entertaining scenario here, otherwise I wouldn't have opened the script, and I also believe there's always a market for relationship comedy, just get it on track…