Romantic comedy is a genre that has always stood on shaky ground with film critics. Some films like When Harry Met Sally and 500 Days of Summer shake critics out of their somewhat jaded shell and remind us what it is like to fall in love. Others like How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days and The Wedding Planner have a more…specific audience. The one element that ties all of these successful romantic comedies together is that whether the critics liked them or not, they were fun. The title of How Do You Know refers to a brief and sort of inconsequential conversation in the movie where Owen Wilson’s character asks his teammates, “How do you know when you’re in love?” He is mostly met with blank stares, and one says, “I use a condom with all the other girls.” I think the real question that comes out of this film is how do you know when a romantic comedy isn’t working? The answer is that romantic comedies stop working when they stop being fun.
At the start of How Do You Know, Lisa (Reese Witherspoon) is an Olympic gold medal-winning baseball player and George (Paul Rudd) is a successful businessmen. Their charmed lives fall to pieces, however, when Lisa is cut from her team and George is informed that he is part of a federal investigation into wiretapping and other illegal business tactics. They first meet on a blind date where both of them are feeling the absolute lowest they have ever been in their lives. Instead of putting up the pretense of a date, they mutually decide to enjoy a good Italian meal in silence. Despite this one blind date, Lisa is actually seeing Matty (Owen Wilson), another professional baseball player and a known playboy. In an excuse to get Lisa and George to see each other again, Matty and George’s father Charles (Jack Nicholson) live in the same building, so Lisa and George see each other again and form a sort of friendship which of course turns into a romance.
There are many romantic comedies that have a love triangle where it is fairly obvious who should end up with whom. The Wedding Singer is a perfect example. Adam Sandler is adorable, and the other guy is a moron. Drew Barrymore will pick Adam Sandler. The trouble is that in How Do You Know, Lisa is dating Matty, an overly exaggerated male chauvinist character much like Drew Barrymore’s fiancé in The Wedding Singer, and the movie has the nerve to try to make a case for Matty. Lisa walks out on him numerous times and keeps coming back. Why does she come back? The audience doesn’t really get to find out.
I could have forgiven this shortcoming if the film didn’t spend most of its scenes starting with this dialogue:
Lisa: Hi.
George: Hi.
Lisa: …I should go.
Why should she go? The scene has just started! They are trying to be cute and awkward, but they don’t succeed. I felt like they were just treading water and killing time until the end when we know they will end up together. There were so many pointless scenes in this movie, and George kept reminding me of Family Guy’s parody of Hugh Grant movies where he stutters, stammers, and then smiles at the camera and says, “I’m so charmingly befuddled.” No one aside from Jack Nicholson can put together a coherent sentence in this movie, and most of his lines are fairly uninteresting dialogue with a couple of curses thrown in to get some easy giggles. Why did the screenwriter or director think that anyone would find this entertaining?
There was one scene in How Do You Know that I will admit was heartfelt. George’s assistant Annie (Kathryn Hahn) is pregnant through the whole movie and has a baby right near the end of the film. At the hospital, her boyfriend Al (Lenny Venito) gives a heartfelt speech about loving people for exactly who they are and proposes to Annie. The trouble is that Al is only in that one scene, and Annie is a supporting character. The movie spends very little time with them and only has them together for that one scene, and yet they have more chemistry and heart in their one scene than Lisa and George has in the entire rest of the movie. How do you know when a romantic comedy isn’t working? When the side characters have more chemistry than any of your leads, that’s how you know.
BONUS: MOST RANDOM CAMEO EVER
I adore Tony Shalhoub, and when he showed up as the shrink, I was really excited. His character had so much potential and could have given us some insight into Lisa’s mind. How does she feel about getting cut from the team? Is her identity wrapped up in her career? Why does she stay with Owen Wilson’s character? Instead, he disappears after one scene. Such a waste.
"How Do You Know" opens December 17, 2010 and is rated PG13. Comedy, Romance. Directed by James L Brooks. Written by James L. Brooks. Starring Jack Nicholson, Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd, Reese Witherspoon.
