Blind Dating is one of those sadly frequent films that manage to be obnoxiously mediocre. Failing to bring anything new to the romantic comedy table (and even misleading with its trailer) this catastrophe is so poorly contrived that even the major plot points and twists on conventional “boy meets girl” plots are utterly trivial and expendable.

Danny (Chris Pine) is literally blind and with the help of his often sarcastic and cruel brother Larry (Eddie Kaye Thomas from American Pie fame) is set up on a series of blind dates to help him get over the awkwardness of meeting girls. After numerous failings, he realizes he is intrigued by the secretary at the doctor’s office he has been visiting for information on a neurological surgery that may help him to see. When Leeza (Anjali Jay) falls for him as well, despite her preplanned betrothal, Danny is hopelessly shattered, while Leeza has to come to terms with her Indian heritage and traditions to determine whether pursuing Danny is ultimately the right decision.

The most disappointing aspect of the film is its complete absence of an original plot. “Boy meets girl, loses girl, and then regains girl” has been done countless times in an infinite number of situations. It baffles me how a film like this could be appealing to anyone familiar with movies. The only new twist is the Danny’s literal blindness, except that the filmmakers fail to make that a necessary aspect. Had the lead character simply been insecure and had problems successfully communicating with women, the entire film wouldn’t have been altered. The blindness aspect was only utilized a handful of times early on to create slapstick situations on his series of blind dates. It’s essentially a punch line that exhausts itself five minutes into the film. The only other unique aspect is that of the love interest’s Indian descent, but that plays out the same as any ethnicity since the focal point is on her preexisting engagement more than her culture’s planned marriages.

Early on the film presents itself as a comedy, making use of Danny’s blindness to create a couple of physical jokes. During one particular scene, in which he attempts to make it through an entire date without letting on to the fact that he’s blind, the couple go back to his place where his date does a brief striptease. While the premise is humorous and the potential is abundant for either raunchy hilarity or ridiculousness along the lines of Deuce Bigelow, the scene is cut short. After discovering he’s blind, she just leaves. The follow-through in that scene epitomizes the lackluster punch-lines and abrupt approach to nearly every bit of comedy in the film. Set-ups are reasonable, but the creativity quickly dissipates as none of the ideas are developed into anything remotely funny.

The PG-13 rating really hurts the potential uproarious tone of the movie. The filmmakers obviously chose to go in a different direction, steering clear of the American Pie brand of naughty humor. With that in mind, the trailer is a little deceiving in that it presents the feature as a comedy. Yet after the initial barrage of slapstick and blind jokes, the film takes a more serious turn and collides head on into the realm of drama. And as tragedies befall the lead character, the humor completely decamps and we’re left with a very different taste in our mouths. Normally it would be commendable that the creator’s tried to evoke such a large scope of emotions from one film, but the formulas used in Blind Dating simply don’t equal entertaining.

On the bright side, director James Keach spent a lot of time researching blindness and the various corrective operations, so that when depicting Danny’s actions and the surgical procedure that is available to him, the realism is high. The technology used in the film actually exists, and the results are incredibly accurate.

As a comedy, Blind Dating fails, and as a romantic drama the film also falls short. Devoid of any outrageous bits of humor or any unconventional storytelling, or any really unique plot conventions, this is one bad date you’ll soon forget.

- Mike Massie