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Poster for 20 Dates

20 Dates

A comedy so real you'll think it's fiction.

1998 · 1h 27m · R Comedy, Romance
Directed by Myles Berkowitz

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Overview

Myles is divorced in L.A. He wants a love life and a film career. So he decides to go on 20 dates and find true love in front of a camera, making his first feature. His patient agent, Richard, finds a $60,000 investor, the shadowy Elie. Myles starts his search, sometimes telling his date she's being filmed, sometimes not. Elie wants sex and titillation, Myles wants it "real." Myles regularly talks with his old film teacher, Robert McKee, who wonders if love is possible in modern life. Half-way through the 20 dates, Myles meets Elisabeth; she's everything he desires and she likes him. Can he finish the 20 dates, satisfy Elie, and complete his film without losing Elisabeth?

Director and cast

Critics on Rotten Tomatoes

Top critics, in their words

All reviews
38%
Tomatometer
Rotten

Berkowitz is a rather annoying person.

Jeff Millar, Houston Chronicle
Rotten

A chronicle of how aspiring American filmmaker Myles Berkowitz finally came up with an idea for selling a film: He'd combine his two areas of failure in life -- trying to break into movies and trying to find a girlfriend -- into one problem.

Liam Lacey, Globe and Mail
Rotten

Like an obnoxious four-year-old who believes everything he does is fascinating and adorable, filmmaker Myles Berkowitz likes to announce, at the very start of a first date, that certain foods cause him to suffer from diarrhea or constipation.

Justine Elias, Village Voice
Rotten

Berkowitz went to great trouble to stage, edit, and control certain aspects of his film so that it has a formulaic dramatic structure; one wonders why he didn't make the effort to present himself as a likable human being.

James Berardinelli, ReelViews
Rotten

What's so disagreeable about Berkowitz is that he seems to think that his natural tendency towards egotistical self-promotion is an adorable quirk, something that you should be completely taken with even as it makes your skin crawl.

Paul Tatara, CNN.com

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