Old Fashioned is a 2014 romance film; directed, written and starring Rik Swartzwelder. It was distributed by Pure Flix.
Swartzwelder plays Clay Walsh, a former frat boy, who runs an antique shop in a small Midwestern college town. He has become famous around the town for his outdated beliefs on love and romance as well as for his devout faith in God. When Amber Hewson (Elizabeth Ann Roberts) rents the apartment above his shop, she finds herself surprisingly drawn to his faith and ideas, which are new and intriguing to her. And Clay, though he tries to fight and deny it, simply cannot resist being attracted to her spontaneous and passionate embrace of life. Ultimately, Clay and Amber must step out of their comfort zones as the two of them, together, attempt the impossible: an old-fashioned courtship in contemporary America.
This film features examples of:
- Author Tract: Kind of inevitable when the same guy is writing, directing and starring in the movie.
- Bland-Name Product: It's stated that during his frat boy days, Clay used to produce what's clearly a stand-in for the Girls Gone Wild video series.
- Corrupting Pornography: Clay Walsh's Dark and Troubled Past is that he was once involved in a Girls Gone Wild-esque series of exploitation films (with implications that roofies and sexual abuse were involved) and it filled him with so much shame that he converted to Christianity, became a handy-man in his home town and developed a Madonna-Whore Complex in the process.
- Dumbass DJ: Brad, who seems to spend most of his airtime being a sexist jerk. One of his segments is literally entitled "Women Are Stupid".
- The Moral Substitute: The film was deliberately positioned as this to Fifty Shades of Grey, featuring old-fashioned courtship that upheld Christian values, down to both films being released on the same date (Valentine's Day 2015).
- I'm a Man; I Can't Help It: Clay believes that merely being in the same room as a woman will tempt him to try and bed her, hence why he initially refuses to even let Amber stay in her apartment while he fixes things.
- Madonna-Whore Complex: Comes with the movie’s condemnation of pre-marital sex.
- Old-School Chivalry: Pretty much the crux of the film is about Clay's chaste ideas on relationships.
- Reformed Bully: Clay used to be a frat boy before taking his old-fashioned beliefs in courtship.
- The Friend Nobody Likes: Brad, the shock jock DJ who is somehow part of Clay's circle of friends, even though he is a complete tool who seems to get on everyone's nerves.
- Sex Is Evil: The movie‘s belief that dating is bad comes from it’s belief that it is just a pretense for hooking up.
- Take That!:
- The movie exists as one towards Fifty Shades of Grey.
- Clay says that dating is just where a man and a woman hop into bed and decide if they’re a match later in a derisive tone.
