This, I have to admit, is another film I watched on a flight. It was - I thought - the best of a bad bunch on offer, since I'm no huge fan of childrens' animated films or much else that was available! I secretly (well, apparently not that secretly) quite like romantic dramas of this ilk (think Bed of Roses, My Best Friend's Wedding and that dreadful one with Derek from Grey's Anatomy - erm, I will have to resort to looking it up...), so I though it might be all right.
Call me shallow, but the biggest problem I had with the entire film was one that's not all that unusual, I find, for US films based around a premise that requires the viewer to go along with their assumptions and assertions about what constitutes attractive, and what does not. In this particular film, we're expected to accept that the protagonist - played by Ginnifer Goodwin - is plain/ordinary-looking, while Kate Hudson is held up in contrast as gorgeous, and - most problematic for me - the man of their affections, Dex (played by one Colin Egglesfield), is repeatedly told how handsome he is: in essence, there's a lot of the whole 'Women who look me don't attract men who look like you' dialogue... the problem being, Goodwin is attractive, and Egglesfiled is nothing special! (Don't get me wrong, he's an attarctive guy and all. But seriously, he's NOT devestatingly gorgeous or owt... http://www.imdb.com/name/nm1148573/ )
This doesn't make the film bad, in itself, but it doesn't help.
In general, it's just not a film that does or says anything very exciting, at all. Its visually plain, narratively uninspiring, and relies too heavily on bizarre romantic drama/comedy conventions to have any worthwhile comment to make about relationships. The one interesting aspect of it, for me anyway, was its use of flashback - actually not that common in the genre; more the stuff of fabulous B-action movies starring Jean-Claude! - to show Goodwin's character, Rachel's realization of how her conformist, unchallenging behaviour has put her, Dex and Darcy in the situation they face in the film, and how given that she can't change her past actions, she needs to change the way she acts now. Of course, Dex is equally incapable of radical change - equally beholden to convention (with the mildly perceptive addition of observations about the role of his Father and/as social convention in all this) - and this either adds some complexity to the plot or drags the film out longer, depending on your take on it as it passes the 90-minute mark!
What the film fails to do - as most do, to be fair - is to move beyond painting the protagonist and her friend as horribly unsuited to each other as friends, which is a shame and makes no sense, given the premise of the film, of course (that Darcy and Rachel are very close, very best friends). It also fails to make the "happy ending" for the protagonist genuinely morally difficult: the narrative makes her hard decision easy, retrospectively. Annoying stuff!
Worth it for romantic drama fans, though. And for anyone who thinks Hudson and Egglesfield are gorgeous, while Goodwin is plain, perhaps?
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