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Wednesday, December 22, 2010

MOVIE REVIEW 
How Do You Know
...Because Yours Truly Watched It, That's How...


Reese Witherspoon as Lisa and Owen Wilson as Matty in James L. Brooks' romantic comedy "How Do You Know", which opened last weekend. 
Sony Pictures

by Omar P.L. Moore/PopcornReel.com        Follow popcornreel on Twitter FOLLOW
Wednesday, December 22, 2010

It's just about official: Hollywood romantic comedies as a genre is dead.  Dead in the water.  "How Do You Know" is the nail in that coffin.  About a year ago Nancy Meyers started the ball rolling toward this fateful destination with "It's Complicated", and now another veteran director, James L. Brooks ("Broadcast News", "As Good As It Gets"), seals the coffin shut with a film whose content doesn't jibe with its title.

Set in Virginia, the very start of the film is alien from its remainder.  A small girl is pushed to the ground by a small boy on a baseball field.  She's just hit a baseball off a tee in one try, where the boy couldn't in three.  Okay.  The girl becomes an older Lisa (Reese Witherspoon), a softball all-star, who later gets cut from the school team.  She jettisons baseball athlete boyfriend Matty (Owen Wilson) and runs into a train wreck George (Paul Rudd), who has just been indicted and is trying to escape from any other bad news his father (Jack Nicholson) has for him.

The bad news though is the film itself, which like such 2010 films like "Killers" doesn't seem to know what it's about or the direction it's traveling in.  Lisa bounces like a pinball between two men who don't deserve her.  It hardly makes sense, for she has more intellect than the two combined.  (Silly trivia: Lisa's super-tanned.  She probably spent six months on a beach in Barbados or the Bahamas.)  You wonder with Lisa's good looks and smarts why she hasn't managed to upgrade to a better class of man. 

Ms. Witherspoon returns to the kind of comedy she did well ("Legally Blonde", "Sweet Home Alabama") before and after winning her Oscar in 2006, but here something --namely a fully-fleshed out character -- is missing.  She looks jaded, and belongs in a better film than this one.  Everyone is unhappy or irritated, and George's secretary (Kathryn Hahn), who is about eight months' pregnant, lampoons her own pregnant condition.  It's very unnatural, yet "How Do You Know" proceeds as if its characters inhabit a world of normalcy.  There's no authentic romance of any kind, and the film tries shoehorning people together to forge the inevitable love-bound conclusion.  It's all unconvincing.

From all appearances, Mr. Brooks has dialed down the emotional intelligence and maturity of everyone in his screenplay.  "How Do You Know" feels like it has been directed on auto-pilot, or worse yet, that it's taking its audience for granted.  It's a skeleton of the infinitely better work Mr. Brooks has done over the years.  The director assembles superstar talent like his old buddy Mr. Nicholson, and employs the comic zaniness of Mr. Rudd, but neither is fresh enough to enliven a very tired and unfunny $100 million film.

With: Mark Linn-Baker, Lenny Venito, Molly Price, John Tormey, Teyonah Parris, Tony Shalhoub.

"How Do You Know" is rated PG-13 by the Motion Picture Association Of America for sexual content and some strong language.  The film's running time is one hour and 56 minutes.
 
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