The Two Most Recent Movies I've Seen

Dear The Internet,

I have this theory called the Airplane/Cable Theory that states that all movies seen on cable/TV are improved because you are seeing them under the most comfortable of situations (in your own home with your hand in your pants, Al Bundy style) and all movies seen on a plane are worsened because you are seeing them under the most uncomfortable situation possible (crammed into a plane, where a hand in your pants can put you on the no fly list).

With that in mind, I saw The Bounty Hunter on a plane and it was terrible. I could keep going, but it boils down to Jennifer Aniston and Gerard Butler having zero chemistry, the characters they play seem better off apart (Butler’s character is a reckless alcoholic and chronic gambler and we are supposed to root for them to get together?), and the story telling in general is very clunky. It just isn’t a very well made movie.

Life As We Know It actually wasn’t awful. Katherine Heigl plays the uptight shrew she’s been in her past five movies and Josh Duhamel plays an immature womanizer. They don’t get along, but their best friends marry each other so they are sort of forced into a sort of mutual tolerance. We see a montage in which it’s revealed that Duhamel is an inconsiderate jerk and Heigl is a humorless wet blanket. The best friends have a child and then die in a car accident soon after the child’s first birthday. Duhamel and Heigl are named the guardians of the orphaned child. It seems iffy to me that any parent would name their single friends who hate each other as their child’s guardian, but it’s a movie so disbelief suspended.

From there it’s a typical “opposites attract” romantic comedy. The formula goes a little something like this: guy and girl don’t get along, something happens that forces guy and girl together, guy and girl start to like each other, something happens to make them hate each other again, side character offers advise, guy/girl rushes to stop girl/guy from doing the thing that will keep them apart forever, guy/girl forgives girl/guy, kissing. Mix in funny friend/parent and wacky job for variety. It’s the formula we’ve been using since Shakespeare (replace “kissing” with “wedding” and you have most of his comedies) and it’s served us well.

The key issue with this formula is that it relies on the characters being slightly obnoxious in the beginning so that we can see why they don’t get along. A strong movie will allow the characters to develop past these flaws to be seen as lovable. The Bounty Hunter starts off with characters that are deeply broken, not humorously flawed, so it seems pretty unlikely that they will make believable changes over the course of the movie that would facilitate a relationship and, surprise, they don’t. Life As We Know It has the right level of annoyance in the beginning, but the characters don’t really show enough of themselves past that. Duhamel’s character is given the chance to grow because it makes sense that his immaturity would be lessened with the responsibility of a child. Heigl’s character on the other hand, starts off uptight, but can’t really learn to loosen up because that just isn’t what motherhood does to someone. It just doesn’t make sense in the story for Heigl’s character to change all that much, so she doesn’t. She only starts to like a more grown up Duhamel.

For all of its formulaic conventions, it also has a few welcomed departures. The biggest comes in the CPS worker that visits a few times throughout the movie. Instead of being the typical “we’re going to take away your baby” CPS worker of movies past, we get a humorous case worker who cuts right to the chase and offers advise, not threats. This character seems to be on screen if only to get to the point and provide a few laughs but she still avoids some typical clichés (case in point, a scene where there are pot brownies that she doesn’t ingest and don’t cause a “hilarious” scene of her tripping out). The funny best friends are replaced by a bevy of quirky neighbors, but these also work as illustrations of the people and relationships Heigl and Duhamel don’t want to become, so I’ll allow it (plus, Rob Huebel has some very funny lines).

All in all, I enjoyed Life As We Know It. I didn’t totally buy the leads getting together at the end, but it still had some laughs. T Bounty Hunter on the other hand, I rate just below Monster In Law and Failure To Launch on the crimes against humanity/worst movies list. Funny enough, I’ve seen all three of these on planes.