Title: Life As We Know It Director: Greg Berlanti Staring: Katherine Heigl, Josh Duhamel Aspect Ratio: 2.35:1 Studio: Warner Bros. Pictures Genre(s): Comedy Rated:       (For sexual material, language and some drug content)   Buy From Amazon.com: DVD / BluRay / Soundtrack / Soundtrack (MP3)

CONSUMER ADVICE

Parents, there is some mild language and a couple of sex scenes. Recommended for ages 12 and up.

I’m going to confess something: I hate Katherine Heigl. Hate her. I hate her stupid movies. I hate her attitude towards feminism. I especially hate that her movies make money which insures MORE bad movies get made! After her comments that “Knocked Up” was sexist towards women she released “27 Dresses,” which portrayed women as just costing through life until they got married. How this was better than being in a sex comedy where the women have human feelings I don’t know. Now we have “Life As We Know It” which is...well, it’s about two hours long as far as I could tell. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen a movie that defines what an “idiot plot” is. Now I have another one.

Granted, the characters don’t exactly talk like idiots. Everyone speaks clearly to each other and there isn’t quite the giant misunderstanding that goes with most of these movies. But where do I start? At movie opens with our two protagonists: Holly (Heigl) and Messer (Josh Dunamel). The two are set up on a blind date by their best friends and it goes so bad they don’t even leave the driveway together. However their best friends have no married each other so these two have to see each other all the time, making snarky comments all the way. They have no chemistry together and I had no reason to root for them when the film started. When their best friends die in a car wreck though they find out that they’ve been named the godparents of their baby girl Sophie.

Now right off the bat we have a premise that doesn’t work. Two people die and leave the care of their daughter to two people who aren’t married or even like each other? That just strikes me as planning. There are several married neighbors that are good with kids and would have been perfect to send this little girl to. But no, none of those people are good looking enough, so instead they leave her with these two. It’s a premise that doesn’t work and is made all the worse that neither Holly or Messer have any chemistry to speak of. She’s a control freak and he’s a laid back guy who likes to get...well, laid. The arrangement they have is that they both live in the house that their friends owned (because it’s paid for).

The film also goes through the motions of “will these two have sex” and “if they have sex what will tear them apart?” No one wrote this. The story is on auto-pilot. We can’t be surprised because the film is following a formula and we know how it works. It’s like making an average hamburger and expecting people to stop going to their favorite restaurant even though it has a better product. Why see this when “The Social Network” is playing right next door? Never mind. The reason, I believe, that no one wrote this is because there was a baby in it. Babies tend to get a reaction from people regardless what’s going on. They smile, burp, and poop. People find it cute because they’re babies. And boy does this film milk the baby situations for far more than they’re worth.

Even the baby gets annoying because all it did was cry a lot. It wouldn’t have mattered if there actually HAD been a baby in the theater crying because it would have just blended in with the film! The movie was directed by Greg Berlanti, whose only previous film is “The Broken Hearts Club” I have not seen that movie so I don’t know how it compares, but Berlanti is also a very successful television producer and has worked on shows like “Brothers & Sisters,” “Eli Stone,” and (my personal favorite) “Everwood.” Judging from the quality of those shows this is not something he would normally make. Was the paycheck just too good? Is TV on it’s last legs? I don’t know, but a career a movie like this does not make. It’s a routine comedy that offers predictable jokes and is only different in that a baby cries a lot. And people hire a babysitter to watch their kids so they can come see this?