By In the well-worn Romantic Comedy genre, there is still one thing that can help breathe life into a stale plot – honesty. When a romcom comes around that truly speaks to people’s inner emotions, or reveals an aspect of life that was previously hidden, it’s truly moving. Sure, we may know how the story is going to unfold, but that special human insight is what involves us with the characters and makes us care about the stakes of their relationship.
Life as We Know It is a movie that utterly lacks this kind of honesty.
In the well-worn Romantic Comedy genre, there is still one thing that can help breathe life into a stale plot – honesty. When a romcom comes around that truly speaks to people’s inner emotions, or reveals an aspect of life that was previously hidden, it’s truly moving. Sure, we may know how the story is going to unfold, but that special human insight is what involves us with the characters and makes us care about the stakes of their relationship.
Life as We Know It is a movie that utterly lacks this kind of honesty.{{page_break}}
Meet Holly Berenson (Katherine Heigl) and Eric Messer (Josh Duhamel). Holly runs a French bakery, doesn’t get out much, and has a bit of a problem finding “Mr. Right.” Eric — or rather “Messer” as he prefers — is a bad boy with a long line of ladies at his doorstep. When their two best friends die in a car accident, Holly and Messer learn that they were both listed as the Godparents for their friends’ one-year-old child, Sophie. After some soul searching, Holly and Messer agree that the best thing for little Sophie would be to move into their friends’ house and raise Sophie as best they can.
As you can imagine, this plan does not go off without a hitch. Sophie immediately puts the forced-together couple to the test with a battery of baby-related problems. But it is during these trials and tribulations that we start to see the veneer of the film crack, and its painfully formulaic soul begin to show. Any number of generic baby jokes are dispensed in rapid fire, as the film attempts to simulate the non-stop stress of parenting. Have a feeling that the baby will throw up soon? It will happen. Think a dirty diaper would complicate the scene? It’s in there. The result of this is that the film keeps throwing reused gag after reused gag at us and never ends up digging down beyond the surface.
As a duo, Heigl and Duhamel don’t have the type of chemistry, or the writing behind them, to create a believable couple. Yes, they have petty personality problems, but overall they’re obsessively perfect people. And there is nothing more boring than seeing perfect people performing their perfection so perfectly. See? Even reading about it is annoying. This stale relationship between the characters leaves your connection to the romance dead on arrival.
However, when the full force of the supporting cast is at play, scenes actually become engaging and start to break away from the formulaic. Wonderful comedians like Rob Huebel, Kumail Nanjiani, and Will Sasso infuse their scenes with enough lightness to escape the stress of the rest of the narrative, while actress Melissa McCarthy brilliantly portrays a modern southern belle. It’s a shame, since characters like the one played by Andrew Daly, whose matter of fact delivery produces the biggest laughs of the film, are just barely ever on-screen.
So, in the end, this Romantic Comedy provides us with an unconvincing romance and comedy that is few and far between. Viewers will get a neat, self-contained story that tries to ride the full rollercoaster of emotion, but does so in such a slight manner that viewers will likely be unconvinced. If you’re expecting anything more from this than what you’ve seen before, you’re out of luck. If you want to see the same thing again, with fairly attractive characters this time around, then Life as We Know It is the movie for you.
Overall Score: 4.50 – Terrible. (4s are terrible in many ways. They’re bad enough that even diehard fans of its genre, director, or cast still probably won’t enjoy it at all, and everyone else will leave the theater incredibly angry. Not only are these not worth renting, you should even change the TV channel on them in the future.)
Life as We Know It is formulaic to a fault and wastes any promise held in the dark-toned premise. No romance, little comedy, and an unconvincing pair of leads makes this outing feel stale at best.
Tom Fronczak:
Overall Score: 6.60 — A good romantic comedy film is held back by one too many clichés and a flawed male lead character who’s hard to sympathize with, but is somewhat redeemed by a great supporting cast. Read his full review here.
Siobhan Watters:
Overall Score: 6.95 — Raising a baby forces Heigl and Duhamel to grow up before they can have a grown up relationship. I deem this Responsible Romance. Read her full review here.