![]() ![]() That's one of the ways the movie clicks into its audience: a lot of women are thinking about the same questions as Holly, who wants kids, just not now. This one aims at the ''young and married'' demographic, about 30.īoth actors are incredibly dishy, playing people who are tempted by ambition and career, rather than having a child. Neither Heigl (31) nor Duhamel (37) is in the usual age band for playing the lead in a romantic comedy, but that is changing as younger audiences delay their choices. As Holly comes down the stairs to greet them, one of the women has to explain: ''Sweetie, you have shit on your face.'' They arrive en masse with bereavement food just as Holly is trying to cope with a major nappy-filling event. The neighbours are an eccentric, friendly mix: fat and cheerful, skinny and wired, even a gay couple who have a child. To give Sophie continuity, Holly and Messer move into the house of their dead friends, in a leafy neighbourhood in Atlanta, Georgia. All Rights Reserved.I liked that: they have put everything in reverse order and that allows some reality into the story. Life As We Know It doesn't reinvent the genre, but this pleasant caregiving heartwarmer is a romcom as we know it. It's baby-steps progress for each of them, but progress nonetheless.Īt times, given the characters the two leads play and their brand and style of chemistry, Life As We Know It proceeds like an updated Doris Day-Rock Hudson romp, with the extra-added winning ingredient of five little girls (twins and triplets) playing Sophie at various stages, charming the audience with their irresistible cuteness. Heigl (who, interestingly, also served as an executive producer along with her mother, Nancy) is trying to update her big-screen persona and get the bad taste of several recent missteps ( 27 Dresses, The Ugly Truth, Killers) that followed her triumph in Knocked Up out of her audience's minds.Īnd Duhamel, a natural performer with a graceful touch for light comedy, is trying to establish a leading-man image after making solid but quiet contributions to Ramona and Beezus and When In Rome. Octoby EmanuelLevy The new romantic comedy, Life as We Know It, is a step in the right direction for star (and producer) Katherine Heigl, having made so far mostly bad and disappointing flicks (27 Dresses, and The Ugly Truth). Perhaps most important, the two lead performers, who emerged from television stardom, are natural and likable, and they manage to make their characters relatively and recognizably real, even when the script is putting them through their generically outlandish paces. The director, Greg Berlanti ( The Broken Hearts Club: A Romantic Comedy), manages to layer his comedy more than we have come to expect in the genre, and the screenplay by Ian Deitchman and Kristin Rusk Robinson conjures a few laughs, many smiles, and plenty of oohs and aahs. Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel are well matched, even if their characters are not, as caterer Holly and TV-sports technical director Messer in a movie that may be easy to predict in terms of its outcome, but that is eminently watchable because the screenplay, despite the extraordinary circumstances involved, remains anchored in recognizable reality. So the two of them, who have fallen deeply in loathe, leave their lives and careers behind and move under Sophie's roof in Atlanta, where they set up a cooperative system of housekeeping and child-rearing, and take a page or two out of "Parenting for Dummies." In this opposites-attract romantic comedy, Life As We Know It, after the setup described above these two are summoned by the police and told that their married friends have been tragically killed in an automobile accident and that the two of them have been named in their will as sharing joint custody of Sophie and are thus in charge of the orphaned child's upbringing. ![]()
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