How Do You Know
You might guess that this one was Juliette's pick, and that's more or less true, but I had actually been intrigued by it as well. I like Paul Rudd and Owen Wilson, after all, but more than that I was interested to see what kind of movie Reese Witherspoon would pick as her first after a two-year hiatus, especially since I'd liked pretty much everything I'd seen her in before. Sadly, that streak has come to an end, because despite the strong cast, How Do You Know was mediocre at best.
I think that writer-director James L. Brooks and I just aren't on the same wavelength. I didn't care for As Good As It Gets and found Spanglish disappointing and scattered. With How Do You Know, Brooks has continued his streak of well-cast films that can't get past the poor script, and with respect to the writing, this one was the worst of the three.
Things just sort of... happened. Characters behaved oddly with little to no warning and often for no apparent reason. Important relationships were insufficiently explained, leaving me with no clear idea of how or why the people involved should have been acting. Neither of the main characters' plotlines made a lot of sense, nor did they come together or resolve in any meaningful way. It was just a strange, barely connected series of scenes, many of which didn't work individually and none of which worked together to form a coherent whole.
Mind you, I've seen all of the principal actors (and most of the supporting ones) do great work before. I have to give them an A for effort here, because the performances were about as good as they could be. It made it all the more frustrating when they were able to find ways to make moments click, because it was easy to see how good the movie could have been if it had been better written. Alas, it was not to be.
Viewed: 12/30/2010 | Released: 12/17/2010 | Score: C-