985. How Do You Know (2010)

Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Jack Nicholson

Director: James L. Brooks

Running Time: 120 mins

How Do You Know is an American film about a softball player whose life turns to despair when she is not picked for the annual national team, forcing her to rethink her love life, especially when a new man unexpectedly appears on the scene with troubles of his own.

This is an excessively long, unfunny and largely uninteresting romantic comedy. Despite its A-list cast, it fails to make for an enjoyable watch, and whilst it does hold your attention to some degree, it’s not a film that you will be at all intrigued or entertained by, largely due to the terrible screenplay.

Most rom-coms are in the 90-105 minute bracket, which is appropriate for a quick, enjoyable and witty story that’s no Citizen Kane, but is something that will give you a good laugh. Here, throughout the whole 120 minutes, I did not laugh once. There’s so little in the way of decent comedy, and despite the film’s painful efforts to make a good laugh, it’s just more and more unfunny to watch, taking away the only opportunity to make a fun film.

The romance is also your generic story that’s completely predictable from the off. The characters are interesting to some degree, as in that you don’t mind following their story, but you feel no urge to really support them or care about them, but the relationships that unfold in this film are firstly frustratingly clichéd, and secondly completely incoherent.

Paul Rudd, Reese Witherspoon, Owen Wilson and Jack Nicholson all appear to be putting in a decent show, but their characters are so generic that it’s difficult to tell. What makes this story worse is that it blends romance with weird drama, regarding finance, business and corruption, meaning that you’ve got a whole other sub-plot (which in truth plays very little relevance to the development of the main story) that takes up unnecessary time and just bores you even more.

In the end, this is as stereotypical a romantic comedy as the next one, and if you’re a fan of the genre, this may be fine, but the only reason that it would be appealing to most people would be the all-star cast, which disguises the fact that, on the whole, this is seriously a terribly boring and lacklustre film.