Originally, I was just not that into the idea of going to this movie. I've moved past the days of waiting by the phone for a guy (thank goodness!) and didn't necessarily want to go back. But I had a major job interview last week and I've found myself waiting by the phone once again, albeit for different reasons. So today I decided to leave the phone on the kitchen table and give this movie a whirl.
It's an interesting experiment: a romantic comedy struggling with the advent of real-life problems. There are the two lovers just waiting to be united, of course. But there's also a marriage on the rocks, a philandering husband, a great guy who just doesn't want to get married, and a player who goes through women like Kleenex. Because of its many characters, the movie is quite episodic and drags at points, but this is only to be expected.
I enjoyed seeing so many women on the screen, and the cast did a fine job overall. Ginnifer Goodwin sparkles as Gigi, a girl who is just a tad obsessive about dates. Gigi befriends cute bartender Alex (Justin Long), who gives her advice from a man's point of view. Gigi works with Beth (Jennifer Aniston) and Janine (Jennifer Connolly), who is married to Ben (Bradley Cooper). But Ben falls for yoga instructor Anna (Scarlett Johansson). Anna, meanwhile, dangles along nice guy Conor (Kevin Connolly) as her safety and complains to her editor friend Mary (Drew Barrymore). Finally, Ben is friends with Neil (Ben Affleck), who is living happily with Beth, but remains totally opposed to marriage. Got all that? If you don't, that's OK. The movie does a good job weaving the relationships together and moving from story to story in a manner that anyone can follow.
There's not much to say about how the various couples break up and make up—you can figure most of it out from the trailer—but what I found intriguing was the movie's odd relationship with comedy. There are a few laughs, but more often the movie's humor is of the painful variety—think "The Office" rather than SNL here. This makes sense, as the director is "Office" veteran Ken Kwapis. And there's really no way a movie focused on problematic relationships can proceed without a healthy dose of realism. Still, don't go to this movie expecting a laugh riot or a romantic walk through the park.
Yet the movie is still anchored to its roots as a romantic comedy, and especially to the equation that sex=love=marriage. In the real world, that equation is completely false, of course. In this regard, the movie fails as a "women's" movie despite its talented female cast. I'll bet any woman can spot what's missing here: babies. The biological clock means that women do not necessarily have the luxury of waiting for the guy who's so into them that he will decide to propose. The movie, of course, doesn't even bring up the issue of children, and frankly there's no way it could without crossing into some seriously unromantic territory.
But the movie made a valiant effort to speak to men and women, I'll give it that much. The guys aren't all bad (Kris Kristofferson has a great cameo as Beth's doting father) and some of them even experience personal growth. Slick Alex falls prey to the same type of obsession that he warns GiGi against--at least suggesting that being a romantic idiot isn't only a woman's problem. Beth and Janine eventually decide that marriage is not the end-all, be-all of a relationship. Come to think of it, marriage as an idea takes a beating in the movie, justly or not, which is an interesting perspective for movie about happy couples.
But romance is still the central theme. Despite Gigi's voiceover at the end, which proclaims that the happy ending doesn't have to involve a guy at all, the majority of the stories do not support this assertion. Still, I'd recommend this movie because it's interesting to watch and might spark some good debate between the sexes.
And it's not as if the movie fails as a comedy. I was surprised to find that despite its tendency towards (sometimes painful) realism, the movie effectively cheered me up—exactly the point of a comedy, in my view. It just goes to show that the truth is funny, even you're not laughing out loud.