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Picture show Review | 'How Do You lot Know'
Disappointed in Softball, but Will She Be Disappointed in Love?
- How Do You Know
- Directed by James 50. Brooks
- Comedy, Drama, Romance
- R
- 2h 1m
In "How Do You Know," a romantic comedy near missed opportunities, scripted and otherwise, Reese Witherspoon wears an industrial-force smile and a laser twinkle that looks as if it'south fix on kill. Although she'south routinely bandage in frothy fare, Ms. Witherspoon comes with a difficult, intimidating edge that almost directors ignore. Perhaps she prefers light and lovely over night and dangerous. Only equally she showed in Alexander Payne's 1999 comedy, "Election," in which she played a ferocious high-school climber in a dazzling operation that has hung over her career like an unmet cartel, she can be a beautiful menace.
In "How Exercise Yous Know," an airless, sometimes distressingly mirthless comedy written and directed past James L. Brooks, Ms. Witherspoon plays Lisa, a softball player with world-form aspirations who fails to brand the cut, an unfortunate story line for a moving picture with the aforementioned problem.
The bad news arrives not long into the picture, furnishing her with a potential existential dilemma — she's a 31-yr-former athlete without obvious prospects — that Mr. Brooks has little interest in exploring. So instead, he dries her tears and piles on the romantic complications, loading her with smiles and sighs, exits and entrances, and cramming this busy yet uneventful picture with the kind of laugh lines congenital for laugh tracks.
Lisa's romantic complications come up in two flavors: vanilla and butterscotch. She almost samples the kickoff, a pale, soft-serve businessman working in some vague capacity named George (Paul Rudd), later on a common friend tries to hook them up. George has his own troubles, including a federal investigation and an overbearing father (an alarmingly unhealthy-looking and wheezing Jack Nicholson) who'southward likewise his dominate.
George is a dainty guy, or so the picture show insists, again and again. By the fourth dimension he calls her, Lisa already seems nether the spell of Matty (Owen Wilson), a major-league bullpen with lots of dough and a softly cracked attitude toward life. Then George strikes out and strikes out again, though of course not for long.
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As it happens, Mr. Brooks has more predictable taste in men than his female characters exercise. Albert Brooks's flop-sweating reporter might have been perfect for Holly Hunter'south motor-mouthed television receiver producer in the filmmaker'southward nigh successful comedy, "Broadcast News," but it was William Injure's dry-look anchor who (temporarily) got the daughter. Again, Mr. Brooks (the filmmaker) tips the scales, more often than not because he seems to have mistaken the appealing, featherweight Mr. Rudd for a romantic lead. Mr. Wilson might not have the seriousness (or self-seriousness) of a William Hurt, simply he holds your interest with his idiosyncratic, off-rhythm amuse and delivery. He's a live wire, and when he'south onscreen the movie jumps.
For the nigh function, though, information technology just sits there, idling in neutral, equally lines are delivered and bodies listlessly moved. The generic quality of the title — yep, indeed, how does anyone know — extends to every other facet in the production. The three main characters talk and talk, salvage for i dinner of cutely enforced quiet between Lisa and George, and by and large sound as if they only got out of therapy: they procedure rather than converse. Yet perhaps because Mr. Brooks doesn't want to get as well heavy, even when the story lists toward the weighty, much of the dialogue comes in tiny, epigrammatic bites not much bigger and certainly no deeper than the affirmations that Lisa has scribbled on Post-its and stuck on her bathroom mirror.
"How Do You Know" is and then wan and disconnected to anything that feels like real life or, merely equally good, a screwball estimation of information technology that it's hard to know what Mr. Brooks was really afterward, other than passing the time with some talented movie people. This lack of urgency and purpose proves toughest on Ms. Witherspoon, who, partly because she's the strongest or most obviously determined actor in this picayune group, seems incapable of goofing her way through the movie. Mr. Rudd and Mr. Wilson have no such problem. Curiously, all 3 are outshone by a pair of grapheme actors — Kathryn Hahn, who plays George'south secretary, Annie, and Lenny Venito, as her boyfriend — who, in an overworked, overwritten hospital scene, testify you what honey looks similar merely by, surprise, proficient acting.
"How Practice You lot Know" is rated PG-xiii (Parents strongly cautioned). Some naughty words.
HOW Exercise YOU KNOW
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Written and directed past James Fifty. Brooks; managing director of photography, Janusz Kaminski; edited by Richard Marks and Tracey Wadmore-Smith; music by Hans Zimmer; production blueprint by Jeannine Oppewall; costumes past Shay Cunliffe; produced by Mr. Brooks, Julie Ansell, Paula Weinstein and Laurence Mark; released by Columbia Pictures. Running time: 1 60 minutes 56 minutes.
WITH: Reese Witherspoon (Lisa), Owen Wilson (Matty), Paul Rudd (George), Jack Nicholson (Charles), Kathryn Hahn (Annie), Mark Linn-Bakery (Ron), Lenny Venito (Al), Molly Price (Coach Emerge), Ron McLarty (George'southward Lawyer), Shelley Conn (Terry), Tony Shalhoub (Psychiatrist) and Domenick Lombardozzi (Bullpen Pitcher).
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/17/movies/17how.html