Feb 5, 2009 6:47 pm US/Eastern
'He's Just Not That Into You'
Christy Lemire, AP Movie Critic
LOS ANGELES (AP) ―
-
-
This isn't exactly a romantic comedy -- at least, not in the most traditional sense.
AP
This isn't exactly a romantic comedy -- at least, not in the most traditional sense. Yes, the characters work themselves into the same sorts of tizzies over falling in and out of love -- or even finding love in the first place -- but frequently mixed in with the fizziness is an unexpected seriousness, an attempt at injecting honesty, realism and even failure.
All those A-list stars in the ensemble cast (Jennifer Aniston! Scarlett Johansson!) are smiling in the movie's posters, but don't let that fool you. Some heavy stuff falls upon their pretty heads. But while it's admirable that director Ken Kwapis' film tries to shake up a typically frivolous formula, too many other elements undermine his intentions.
Based on the best-selling relationship advice book by Greg Behrendt and Liz Tuccillo, the script from Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein ("Never Been Kissed") follows nine intertwined characters struggling to make sense of their love lives.
The women, especially Ginnifer Goodwin's hopeless romantic Gigi, tend to be needy and demanding; the men, like Bradley Cooper's cheating Ben, are caddish and evasive.
And their stories are broken up with title cards taken from the source material's chapters ("... if he's not calling you," for example) that make "He's Just Not That Into You" feel an awful lot like episodic television.
Maybe that's fitting, since the title comes from a line uttered on "Sex and the City," for which Behrendt and Tuccillo were writers.
PG-13 for sexual content and brief strong language. 124 min.
Two stars out of four.
(© 2009 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.)
Click to enlarge
Stumble It!
