Editorial
Front Page - Friday, October 15, 2010
The Critic's Corner
David Laprad
For most people, life proceeds along a predictable path: college, job, marriage, kids. There are slight variations, but for the most part, having children comes after falling in love and getting married, or at least falling in love. It’s the natural order of things.
In “Life As We Know It,” Holly and Eric are as far as getting their careers rolling when life throws them for a loop: their mutual best friends, a married couple with a newborn daughter, are killed in a car crash. While meeting with the pair’s lawyer the next day, they learn their friends had named them as the joint guardians of their newborn, Sophie. In nearly the same breath, the attorney passes along what he hopes is good news: the couple wanted their daughter to experience as little trauma as possible in the event of their deaths, so they also left Holly and Eric their house.
In other words, “Your friends are dead. I’m sorry for your loss, but here’s their kid and the keys to their house. Are you sure they didn’t mention this to you? Anyway, I have a meeting with another client, so...”
But there’s a problem, other than the obvious bump in the road (or sink hole in the middle of the street) this development would present: Holly and Eric can’t stand each other. Their reciprocal loathing began when their friends, Peter and Alison, set them up on a blind date three years earlier, and things went south faster than Sherman’s march to the sea. That can happen when the guy shows up with no plans other than to hook up with another girl later in the evening. “The only way you can pay me back for this is to promise me I’ll never have to see him again,” Holly tells Alison.
The bad date was no one’s fault; Holly and Eric are simply different people. He’s the kind of guy that’s willing to let a woman he just met buy him dinner, then after sleeping with her – but before sending her on her way for good – promises to pick up the tab next time. She’s beautiful, successful and too fastidious for her own good, given the dearth of men in her life.
Holly and Eric can be excused for being caught unaware, as they have no idea they’re in a romantic comedy. It’s unlikely, however, that any of the events in “Life As We Know It” would surprise viewers. Would you be stunned if I were to tell you neither of them knows how to change a poopy diaper, and that they both retch when presented with this challenge moments after the lawyer leaves? Would you be shocked if I were to tell you Sophie cries all hours of the day and night, thereby depriving Holly and Eric of sleep? And would you be angry at me for giving away the ending if I told you the three learn to love each other and become a family?
But even as it proceeds along a predictable path, “Life As We Know It” works. For each cliché, the film delivers a genuine laugh or a moment of warm insight. When faced with the loaded diaper, Eric moans, “There’s no way she ate enough to produce all of that. She had two pieces of macaroni!” When Holly and Eric pull into their driveway after driving Sophie around the block all night to get her to sleep, they look truly exhausted. And as the two develop feelings for each other, they seem at war with themselves, even as they slowly give in to the inevitable. Nothing is rushed or shoved ham-fisted into the natural order of things.
There is a last minute crisis, manufactured to set in motion the most common cliché in the history of cinema: the race to the airport before someone’s plane leaves. As the music increased in tempo and Holly started running, I realized I was sad at the thought of the movie ending. The two stars, Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel, had infused a familiar story with charm, humor and authentic emotions, including anger and frustration. The writer had been smart enough to give both Holly and Eric room to grow as individuals and to avoid the cynicism of most comedies today. And the director had evidently seen enough badly improvised dialog and gags in recent movies to keep his actors working off the written page.
“Life As We Know It” is not a great movie, but it is enjoyable. I went in expecting two hours of contrived cinema and awkward improv. I got the contrived cinema but not the other thing. I also laughed a lot and left glad that I’d spent the last two hours with three characters that had gone through the wringer but ended up in a good place at the end of it all.
Email David Laprad at dlaprad @hamiltoncountyherald.com.
|
|