Life As We Know It **

Well, what do we have here? A romantic comedy starring Katherine Heigl – that’s an original idea (says this critic sarcastically). Really, she doesn’t seem to do much else and, aside from the wonderful 27 Dresses, most of the romcoms she does do are greatly undeserving of her talents. Life As We Know It, however, has something that none of her other romcoms had – Greg Berlanti.
Having created such character based television shows as Everwood and Eli Stone, Berlanti has considerable experience in dealing with content that is based around characters, something which has seemingly made him quite popular in Hollywood with him having been given the job of writing several high profile blockbusters that are coming out in the next few years and certainly something that promises that this film may be more than just your run of the mill romantic comedy. For Life As We Know It, however, Berlanti is merely on directing duties with the job of writing having gone to writing duo Ian Deitchman and Kristin Rusk Robinson, for whom this is only their second writing job after co-writing 1999 TV movie Border Line, the fact that they haven’t done much since not exactly being an encouraging sign.

For Holly (Katherine Heigl) and Eric (Josh Duhamel), their first date should have been their last. Slobby Eric turns up an hour late and heads off early for another date! In fact, the only things the pair have in common are their dislike of each other and the fact that they’re both doting godparents to a toddler named Sophie – daughter of their mutual friends Alison (Christina Hendricks) and Peter (Hayes MacArthur). But when their friends are killed in a car accident and they suddenly become all that Sophie has in the world, Holly and Eric are forced to put their differences aside. Moving in together, they do their best to be proper parents to the adorable tot. Along the way they learn not to mind when Sophie’s poop gets everywhere, and they even begin to find a totally unexpected romance together…

Life As We Know It is a film with real romantic chemistry on display – between Christina Hendricks and Hayes MacArthur, that is, not so much between Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel. When Hendricks and MacArthur are on screen together we really do get a vibe that their characters belong with each other, there simply being something natural about the way they act alongside each other and connect with one another. If they themselves were the focus of the film it might well make for a very charming romantic comedy but, alas, they are not. Rather the stars are Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel, actors who I have absolutely nothing against and who are even charismatic in their own rights here but who have clearly been typecast, Heigl playing the uptight single woman yet again – a role that is starting to become tiresome on her – while Duhamel plays the free-living rogue who changes as the story unfolds and whose mismatched chemistry just does not work, it never really being believable that they would end up together – although this is as much due to the way their characters have been written as their performances, the characters set up to completely loathe each other from the start (them actually convincing as two people who hate each other’s guts) – and there in fact being more chemistry between Heigl and Josh Lucas, who plays a paediatrician who forms a relationship with Holly during the run of the story. The lack of chemistry isn’t the film’s biggest failing though and what really lets it down is the humour. With the film essentially devolving into a typical baby comedy, the humour seemingly just ticks off boxes on a list of clichés that tend to appear in this kind of film – vomit gags, check; poo gags a plenty, check; baby falling over or being knocked over, check ; and so on – and, aside from a few rather funny moments – such as a slightly funny nursery rhyme and a mishap involving a motorcycle (not a baby related scene) – the film largely fails to actually be funny at all and even when it is it is more likely to raise little giggles than big LOLs. The humour is just too obvious and predictable, something that is just as true with the plot, everything unfolding like clockwork, exactly how you would expect a film like this to develop. Basically, the completely predictable storyline delivers nothing that you won’t have seen many times before; unless this is the very first romantic comedy you’ve ever seen in which case I pity you. In handling the tragedy element the film is considerably more successful and the one thing that is done right here is not to shy away from the tragic situation, not immediately at least, and the level of emotion portrayed really is heartbreaking, Heigl and Duhamel both being at their best in the more emotional scenes and their reactions to the unexpected and difficult situation seeming entirely realistic, in the beginning anyway. The tragedy is also made all the more effective by the adorableness of the baby, with this unaware victim of the tragedy being so cute as to make it hard to not want things to work out well, for her rather than for the main characters. This is the one area where Greg Berlanti really does seem to bring something to proceedings but sadly this is not enough to really steer the film away from being a romantic comedy that is more irritating than it is funny and that while occasionally proving quite sweet is lacking the charm necessary to make it anything more than a barely watchable feel good movie that is exactly like countless others before it. Were Greg Berlanti writing and not just directing, perhaps it would be different, but as it is, Life As We Know It is the romantic comedy exactly as we know it and not a particularly good one at that.

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Review by Robert Mann BA (Hons)

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