It's hard to think of the accurate words to describe "The Guitar." "Ridiculous," "overdramatic" and "Oxygen channel after dark" are all words and phrases that spring to mind. But mostly, it's just bad.
Basically, the plot is this: Saffron Burrows is sick. She has cancer. Dr. Janeane Garofalo gives her one or two months to live. In addition to this, she gets laid off from her job and ends a relationship with a man she's apparently dating (I gathered...I wasn't entirely sure what was going on) to add up to pretty much the worst day ever. Saffron Burrows almost kills herself, but notices an ad for short-term loft apartment rentals and goes for it, completely abandoning her apartment and all the stuff in it (Saffron isn't much of one for moving her stuff with her, it turns out).
What follows is a kind of bisexual, white New York City "Last Holiday." Saffron starts spending money left and right, buying all kinds of swanky clothes and furniture for her apartment. She also buys a guitar, and a bunch of amps she doesn't really need (it looks like she's getting ready to host a rock concert in her loft) because of some childhood dream of owning a guitar that never got fulfilled. Oh! and before I forget, there's that bisexual thing: Saffron has sex with the guy who keeps delivering all her packages (Isaach De Bankole) and the gal who keeps delivering all her pizzas (Paz de la Huerta). All this without ever leaving the apartment!
Things keep getting more and more implausible, to the point of utter laughability. All the characters, including the female lead, are totally two-dimensional, barely explained, and chock-full of stereotype fulfillment. Here's an example: the pizza delivery girl is both a) Italian and b) getting married to an abusive boyfriend with mob connections. Other characters, such as Saffron's boyfriend who breaks up with her in the first ten minutes of the movie, should seem more important than they appear (and they appear very little, mostly as incidental plot devices). Finally the whole plot structure collapses and the movie just goes flat, at which point it has the good sense to end.
The thing that gets me the most about this movie isn't the terribly goofy plot, nor the more-intimate-than-necessary sex scenes. It's the message that materialism will heal you, and that an object can give you meaning and something to live for. "The Guitar" is more or less a female-empowered antithesis to "Fight Club." Where Edward Norton found emptiness and confusion in endless catalog shopping, Saffron Burrows seems to have found happiness. "The Guitar" tells us that shopping cures all ills, even, it turns out (spoiler alert) cancer.
Reccommended movies:
Fight Club: searching for meaning and masculinity in a comercially dominated culture.
Last Holiday: At least it's supposed to be funny.
Wit: A movie about cancer that's far more interesting and believable.