Movie Review: Life As We Know It

The previews for Life As We Know It do a very good job of telling you everything about this movie. It follows the usual romantic-comedy formula in placing two wildly incompatible people together through some contrived act of fate and then spends the rest of its time making you laugh at their mistakes and hope they eventually see a way to get together. I'm sure that if you've seen more than five romantic comedies in the last ten years then you could write this movie yourself. It has a few saving graces, but doggedly sticks to the rom-com formula, even when diverging into originality might've helped it stand out from the crowd.

The basic premise is a little unique to this sometimes "traditional" genre. A young couple is killed and the guardianship of their child is left to the godparents. Not a bad start but these godparents happen to loathe each other. They were set up on a blind date that went poorly (the opening scene tries to show this as a "disaster" but it's played more as annoying, not world-shatteringly bad) and since then they've been nothing but aggravating to each other. The hard life lessons that come with raising a child are shown to be mostly background nuisances and mentioned in passing. The only time it's a huge problem is when the script needs these two to get in a fight.

I'm sure there was a casting meeting at some point where Katherine Heigl was the first person mentioned. She's proved herself adept at the formula and has shown better comic timing than others in this over-populated field. Josh Duhamel is not the first (or second, or even fifth) person I would imagine was mentioned in casting talks. He serves as a bland, photocopied sort of "dirty, sweaty, rude, inappropriate, alpha-male" character that was probably meant to be more infuriating to women. But in this case, it's to his credit. When the movie's not trying to force these characters into a predetermined mold, it works well enough. But then the formula has to kick in and everything gets thrown out of orbit with stupid decisions, poorly chosen dialogue and overall Stupid Character Syndrome. You know that if the formula wasn't enforced the whole concept would fall apart.

That's really the whole problem with this movie. It sticks too close to the general format. There are genuinely funny moments, side characters are largely effective at being amusing and a lot of the first 20 minutes feels very promising. But someone (probably an accountant or producer, but who knows) decided to shoehorn the most tired of genre shortcuts into this story and it just grinds to a halt. There are fights out of nowhere, confusion that could be cleared up with just one sentence and romantic feelings that are stated, but not shown. If the movie had stayed away from the temptation of the easy way out it would've played better. If you're a huge fan of these movies and can recognize (but dismiss) the beats every script seems to hit, you can bump this up a point or two. As it is, it just feels like it'll be lost in the shuffle after a few years.

Score: 2 out of 5
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