There must be a magnet between me and this type of comedies that we cannot live without each other, and once in a while I need to see something that I know how it's gonna be, how it's gonna end, because 1) those flicks are easy to predict and 2) sometimes, we reach for a desire that something or someone will surprise us in colorful comedies like this. Well, "Life As We Know It" (suggestive title for what I just said) moved just in the way I thought it would move for good and bad. The result as a whole is a nice film with a charming couple as lead actors.
It goes to tell us the story of Eric (Josh Duhamel) and Holly (Katherine Heigl), two people with nothing in common united by their friends who made a surprising bond that they should raise their orphaned baby in case of their death, which eventually happens. Now, these two workaholic figures with different lifestyles and way of thinking will join forces and lots of scream against each other trying to raise a baby, something they never did in their lives.
Now comes the part where you can see how predictable this film gets. Did the main couple hate each other so much and the way we see that is throughout some funny lines and almost hilarious moments? Check! Some of them will find a nice partner to be romantically involved with? Check! While raising the baby lots of gross humor, a crying baby all the time will be part of this flick? Check! After spending so much time with the kid and with each other Holly and Eric finally will fall in love? Check! And then comes the time when they break up, and the movie seems like "Speed" in the part where the bus has come to the end of the road and something impossible (but totally predictable) will happen to them? Check! So, if you like all of this fore-mentioned things this movie is for you!
But why this film works and doesn't work? It works because Duhamel and Heigl have an amazing chemistry despite some bad jokes here and there, both in drama and in comedy scenes; the story goes okay and has things we can all enjoy if we're not too much demanding. But it doesn't work in a few levels while being very funny before the tragic event that changes everyones lives, there was some weak things that seemed unnoticed by the writers (e.g. Eric and Holly hate each other, their friends just died and he still acts cold towards her? Unexcusable!); the social worker who meets with them was created for comical purposes and it backfired badly, since she was too much goofy, annoying, and the writers while insisting in being serious at points could have make of this character the serious weight of the film, something to really balance the well humored film. At last, the ending could have been so much better if they picked the less expected one and the more realistic, I would say! Not to mention, that the subject received better and funnier treatment in pictures like "Baby Boom" and "Raising Helen".
If the movie gets into a more dramatic level at many times, the comedy helps a little when these two are trying to do whatever to make the baby sleep or get calm (and that includes improvising a funny song or sings Radiohead's 'Creep' to make her sleep), a taxi driver (Faizon Love) friend of Eric hired as nanny while he's at work, and some nice moments between Holly and a doctor (Josh Lucas) that becomes her love interest. And of course, a bunch of scenes with the couple hanging out with their other friends all married, few good things about it.
Clichés after clichés but somehow it manages to be a good entertaining film with some positive things. 7/10
It goes to tell us the story of Eric (Josh Duhamel) and Holly (Katherine Heigl), two people with nothing in common united by their friends who made a surprising bond that they should raise their orphaned baby in case of their death, which eventually happens. Now, these two workaholic figures with different lifestyles and way of thinking will join forces and lots of scream against each other trying to raise a baby, something they never did in their lives.
Now comes the part where you can see how predictable this film gets. Did the main couple hate each other so much and the way we see that is throughout some funny lines and almost hilarious moments? Check! Some of them will find a nice partner to be romantically involved with? Check! While raising the baby lots of gross humor, a crying baby all the time will be part of this flick? Check! After spending so much time with the kid and with each other Holly and Eric finally will fall in love? Check! And then comes the time when they break up, and the movie seems like "Speed" in the part where the bus has come to the end of the road and something impossible (but totally predictable) will happen to them? Check! So, if you like all of this fore-mentioned things this movie is for you!
But why this film works and doesn't work? It works because Duhamel and Heigl have an amazing chemistry despite some bad jokes here and there, both in drama and in comedy scenes; the story goes okay and has things we can all enjoy if we're not too much demanding. But it doesn't work in a few levels while being very funny before the tragic event that changes everyones lives, there was some weak things that seemed unnoticed by the writers (e.g. Eric and Holly hate each other, their friends just died and he still acts cold towards her? Unexcusable!); the social worker who meets with them was created for comical purposes and it backfired badly, since she was too much goofy, annoying, and the writers while insisting in being serious at points could have make of this character the serious weight of the film, something to really balance the well humored film. At last, the ending could have been so much better if they picked the less expected one and the more realistic, I would say! Not to mention, that the subject received better and funnier treatment in pictures like "Baby Boom" and "Raising Helen".
If the movie gets into a more dramatic level at many times, the comedy helps a little when these two are trying to do whatever to make the baby sleep or get calm (and that includes improvising a funny song or sings Radiohead's 'Creep' to make her sleep), a taxi driver (Faizon Love) friend of Eric hired as nanny while he's at work, and some nice moments between Holly and a doctor (Josh Lucas) that becomes her love interest. And of course, a bunch of scenes with the couple hanging out with their other friends all married, few good things about it.
Clichés after clichés but somehow it manages to be a good entertaining film with some positive things. 7/10