Life as We Know It (**)

Directed by: Greg Berlanti

Starring: Katherine Heigl, Josh Duhamel, Josh Lucas, Christina Hendricks, Hayes MacArthur

Seen: October 30th 2010

** Out of ****

When Peter (MacArthur) and Alison (Hendricks) Novak arrange a blind date for their respective best friends Eric Messer (Duhamel) and Holly Berenson (Heigl), they seem to not have much of an idea of what the two want in a relationship. Holly is the control freak who has her defined and definite plan for life, always neat and professional looking. Messer is the full grown man-child, still happy to pick up chicks in bars and go anywhere on his motorcycle. Clearly not a match of obvious perfection.

Over the years of friendship with Peter and Alison, not much changes, as Messer continually makes fun of/with the almost neurotic Holly, and the two remain merely people who happen to have the same friends. That is until Peter and Alison die unexpectedly while on holiday, and their will appoints Messer and Holly as parents to their beautiful little girl Sophie (interestingly enough played as younger girl by triplets Alexis, Brynn and Brooke Clagett, and as a slightly older girl by twins Brooke and Kiley Lidell). Messer and Holly have to move into Peter and Alison’s home to adhere to this wish, and the proverbial fireworks start almost immediately.

That is if they can be called fireworks at all, since in the case of Life as We Know It they can be better referred to as damp matches. This movie is extremely formulaic and predictable, and I deducted that when, not once or twice, but continually, I managed to predict exact events. Usually I don’t see obvious coming along the road with fanfare in most movies, I am happy to accept that I don’t always prefer to think too far ahead searching for ways things might play out, but in Life as We Know It these moments might as well be ticker-taped across the screen lead by the words “Coming Soon”.

The movie tries it’s best to deliver a quirky romantic comedy centred on the relationship between Messer and Holly, and in these attempts seems to forget for all but a few seconds that a little girl has been orphaned, her parents are dead. All the focus and energy is piled into recycled child-care jokes: stinking nappies, trying to stop baby’s crying, etc. I’m surprised they didn’t accidentally bump the girl’s head against a door post at any stage… The movie is also about 2 hours long, which is long for most movies, but here feels like eons as, while you start expecting the end to come at any time, the screen flashes the start of the third of four chapters, Autumn (the seasons are not in any way emotionally linked to the movie, they act solely as an indicator of time passing).

Girls and guys, I implore you to think twice before forcing a guy/inviting a girl to see this. I won’t be too harsh on this movie, as there were some really funny scenes in it, but overall it is just a slump. Katherine Heigl does nothing to try and stretch her acting chops, in fact I believe they do not even have to change her character’s names anymore, at least for her past five movies. Joshua Duhamel is the life-force of this movie, but the script does not really allow him to shine as he mostly has to merely react to Holy’s completely irrational (confirmed by my female friend for the movie) statements and accusations for the entire overlong running time.  I guarantee that you will change the channel before you finish Life as We Know It if you were to see it on television.