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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
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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