Plot summary (with possible spoilers): The dating scene hasn’t worked out quite the way Zoe (played by Jennifer Lopez) envisioned it. She’s tired of putting her dreams of a family on hold as she waits for Mr. Right to come along, so she opts for artificial insemination. It’s a big step, but one that she has thought about for a long time. She’s sure this is what she wants.

The procedure works the very first time, and after Zoe gets the news that she is indeed pregnant, she’s on cloud 9. She rushes out of the clinic to catch a cab home — only to run into Stan (Alex O’Loughlin), who gets in the same cab at the same time. They argue about who was there first, and then are both stubborn enough to walk away from the cab and take the subway instead. Zoe thinks nothing of the meeting until she sees Stan at the Farmer’s Market a couple days later. He remembers her, and is clearly interested in getting together sometime. But Zoe leaves before he has a chance to ask her out.

Fortunately for Stan, Zoe’s friend Mona (Michaela Watkins) gives him her phone number. Stan finds out where Zoe works, shows up, and convinces her to go out with him. They start dating, and, in the tradition of all rom-com couples, fall madly in love with each other very quickly. Then Stan finds out Zoe is pregnant, which causes a major falling out.

The rest of the film then shows how Stan and Zoe struggle to make their relationship work. Does Stan want to stay and raise children that aren’t his? Is he going to bolt at the first sign of trouble? Can Zoe finally put her trust issues to rest and really let Stan into her life? These are the questions that get answered before the end credits roll.

Liked:

• I thought Jennifer Lopez was decent in this film. I mean, everyone wants to bag on her acting skills, but she did fine — considering what she had to work with. She was much better than the male lead, at any rate, and showed that there’s more to her than a nice body that looks good in girls shorts and tight outfits.
• The dog harnessed to the cart was a sight gag that worked throughout the whole film. I never got tired of seeing that little guy struggle along with his wheels. Aw!

Disliked:

• The birthing scene was absolutely terrible!! It went on for far too long, involved characters that nobody cared about, and served no other purpose than to bang readers over the head with the old “giving birth sucks!” line. Ugh, it was simply awful!
• I didn’t understand why Zoe flipped out after Stan said, “They’re not my kids.” He was just telling the truth, after all. What right did she have to get so damn indignant about that??
• I had a hard time believing that Stan would fall sooo in love with Zoe after just a few days (or weeks or whatever) that he would agree to stay with her and help raise her kids. The writer did nothing to establish this as a possibility the character would even entertain. Perhaps if Stan was the kind of guy that really wanted kids, the scenario would be a tad more believable. But it was clearly stated that he did NOT want kids. So what was it about Zoe that made him change his mind?
• Zoe’s labor scene was quite laughable in that she managed to put the pain and everything else on hold for three minutes to listen to Stan’s speech. She could sit there silently for that long when she had just been screaming a second before? Whatever.

Rating:

I didn’t expect much out of The Back-Up Plan, and in that regard, I guess I wasn’t disappointed. Jennifer Lopez was OK for the most part, but practically everything else about the movie sucked. I give it 2 stars out of 5.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Kassie (played by Jennifer Aniston) is a single woman who is tired of waiting around for the right man to show up. She can feel her biological clock ticking, so she decides to have a baby on her own — via artificial insemination. This catches BFF Wally (Jason Bateman) off guard. He has always had romantic feelings for Kassie, and kind of envisioned her going to him for this kind of thing rather than a random donor. But Kassie thinks that would be too weird, so she does things her way.

The donor, whom Kassie wants to meet and be in contact with, is Roland (Patrick Wilson). Once the arrangements are worked out, Kassie throws an insemination party and invites all her friends — including Wally and Roland’s wife. Wally gets totally annihilated at the party because he realizes this is the end of any chance he has with Cassie. While drunk, he stumbles into the bathroom and discovers Roland’s sample jar sitting there, waiting for the doctor to do his thing. Wally accidentally spills the contents of the jar — and then replenishes it with his own sample. He wakes the next morning not remembering a thing.

Seven years pass. Kassie had moved away to Minnesota to be near her parents when Sebastian was born, but now she’s on her way back to NYC and wants to see Wally again. Wally meets up with her and Sebastian, and is struck by how much the kid looks and acts like him. This continues as Wally spends more and more time with the two. Finally, after consulting with friend Leonard (Jeff Goldblum), Wally figures out what must have happened. He is mortified, but knows he has to tell Kassie the truth, especially because he has developed real feelings for Sebastian.

Unfortunately, Kassie has been dating a recently divorced Roland. This complicates the picture, and every time Wally tries to tell her what happened, something comes up to prevent him (isn’t that ALWAYS what happens in movies?). He finally takes action when he learns that Roland is set to propose to Kassie. At first she is pissed, but she eventually comes around so they can all have that happily-ever-after ending.

Liked:

• Based on reviews and initial box office returns, I was expecting an absolute train wreck, but I have to say the movie wasn’t that bad. Of course it was highly predictable, but Jason Bateman was likable as the main character, so I wasn’t bothered too much by the predictability.
• There were quite a few laughs along the way. I rarely do anything more than smile at these kinds of films, but this one had some truly funny moments. It’s not a “laff riot” by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not dull either.
• Whoever played Sebastian was a good little actor. He managed to play his role as overly mature without going into that annoyingly precocious area that I cannot stand in movie kids. Still, I have to wonder how he developed that way with Kassie as a mom. Nurture over nature for most personality traits, right?

Disliked:

• Just once I’d like to see movie/television characters tell each other important information without getting sidetracked a million times and dragging out the inevitable. Seriously, does that EVER happen in real life? If you had something monumental to tell, such as a child’s true paternity, wouldn’t you MAKE SURE that news got out in a timely fashion? God, it bothers me to no end when film characters are so easily put off…
• Kassie and Wally had absolutely zero romantic chemistry. They were good as best friends, but at the final few scenes of them as husband and wife seemed way off.

Rating:

Are moviegoers automatically disposed to disliking Jennifer Aniston projects now? I wouldn’t blame them, given her track record. But The Switch is definitely better than its minuscule $7.6 million opening weekend take would suggest. It’s not great, but it’s a decent film that’s worth seeing. I give it 3 stars out of 5.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Burke Ryan (played by Aaron Eckhart) is a popular grief expert/self-help guru whose books and seminars help people come to terms with the loss of a loved one. Others are attracted by his down-to-earth approach and by the fact that he has personally experienced loss himself. His wife died in a car accident, and images from that night still haunt Burke.

While giving a seminar in Seattle, Burke meets Eloise (Jennifer Aniston), a florist who handles all the flower arrangements at the hotel. He notices that she has a penchant for writing unusual words (like “quidnunc” and “poppysmic”) behind the generic paintings throughout the hotel. Burke looks up the words, smiles, and decides to approach Eloise. She shoots him down the first time, but they keep meeting, and she finally says yes.

They embark on a tentative relationship, as it’s clear to Eloise that Burke still has some issues of his own to work out. Specifically, Burke actually blames himself for his wife’s death, and hasn’t come to terms yet with what happened that night. Until he does, he and Eloise don’t really stand a chance.

The rest of the film then follows the standard formula of having the main couple break up, work things out on their own, and then reunite when everything is better. Sure, the details have changed in this film, but you still get the feeling that you’ve seen it all before.

My Reaction: I like Jennifer Aniston, but think her choice in scripts is pretty bad. It feels as though she plays the same character and goes through all the same situations over and over again. Who knows, maybe it isn’t just the scripts she’s getting. Maybe she simply doesn’t have the acting chops to take on significantly different roles. Whatever the reason, she’s quickly losing credibility as a box office draw. Her last real hit was He’s Just Not Into You, which featured an ensemble cast of big names. Before that, Marley & Me was successful, but I think that was due more to a combination of Owen Wilson, the dog, and having a built-in audience from the original book than from her presence. Any other actress could have played the role and the film still would have made $100 million.

Back to Love Happens. As I said in the final paragraph of the plot summary, the whole love story feels completely familiar and rehashed. Some of the grief counseling subplots were decent, especially the one where Burke seemed genuinely interested in helping the contractor get over the death of his son and get his life back on track. But the scenes with Burke and Eloise were brutal — especially because Eckhart and Aniston had absolutely zero on-screen chemistry. The casting was off in this one.

I think I might give up watching these Aniston films until she comes back with a bona fide hit. Between Love Happens and Management, I’ve had just about enough of these crappy movies. I give Love Happens 2 stars out of 5.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Adrienne Willis (played by Diane Lane) has recently separated from her husband Jack (Christopher Meloni), and is trying to keep things together for teenage daughter Amanda (Mae Whitman) and 12-year-old Danny (Charlie Tahan). The situation gets more complicated when Jack tells Adrienne he wants to get back together. Adrienne isn’t sure she’s ready for that, and holds Jack off by saying she needs some time to think about everything.

Adrienne gets the perfect opportunity when she agrees to spend 5 days in the small town of Rodanthe in North Carolina. Her friend Jean (Viola Davis) thought needed some help, so she asked Adrienne to come and run her small bed & breakfast for a few days. Since it’s the off-season, there will only be one guest, which should be easy enough for Adrienne to handle.

The guest turns out to be plastic surgeon Paul Flanner, who also is going through some messy personal issues of his own. At first the two seem quite different from each other, and though there’s a glimmer of physical attraction, their lives and personalities are just so different. But as they get to know each other over coffee and dinner, their mutual attraction grows, especially when they open up about personal subjects. Soon, a major hurricane traps them in the B&B together, essentially sealing their fate as they both fall in love.

After spending a memorable five days together, Paul drops a bombshell: he must go away to Ecuador to work on a Doctors Without Borders project in order to patch up his relationship with his son Mark (James Franco). Though devastated, Adrienne understands why he must leave and promises to wait for him. Paul will return soon, he says, and then they can pick up where they left off.

During this separation, Paul and Adrienne begin to exchange love letters. This correspondence serves to solidify their belief that they’re meant to be together, and neither one can wait to embark on the next stage in their relationship. But fate intervenes, leaving them with nothing but good memories.

My Reaction: I actually read the Nicholas Sparks novel prior to seeing this film, so I understood a lot more about the characters than was revealed during the course of the movie’s running time. Though there were significant changes from the original, I thought the changes worked. For instance, I liked that the movie was told in the present instead of the flashbacks that Sparks chose for the book. And I liked that Adrienne’s relationship with her husband was a lot more ambiguous in the film, rather than just being divorced altogether as in the original.

Anyway, when I read the book, I was highly skeptical of these two people being able to fall in love over the course of five short days, but somehow, it worked in the movie. I could believe that Paul and Adrienne had strong feelings for each other and were looking forward to spending the rest of their lives together. I don’t know if I’d go so far as to say that being with Adrienne for that short period actually changed Paul so drastically (as his son implied), but I could believe that they fell in love.

Overall, this was an above-average romance that was better than I expected it to be. It clips right along with very few extraneous scenes, and the main characters are likable enough. In fact, I enjoyed seeing “older” (in Hollywood terms) actors as the leads in a romance for once. The 45-year-old Diane Lane looks as though she’s been keeping up with prevera reviews, because her face was flawless. And Richard Gere looked good as well. This film version of Nights in Rodanthe was much better than the book, and I give it 4 stars out of 5.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Set in Paris shortly after Princess Diana’s death, Amelie tells the story of a 23-year-old cafe waitress with a sunny disposition and rich imagination. We begin with a 10-minute vignette of what Amelie’s childhood was like, and how she was isolated and friendless, thus leading her to rely on herself for amusement. That’s an important component of her personality as an adult, and is what ends up driving the film.

One day, Amelie finds a rusty tin box hidden behind the baseboard in her apartment bathroom. Inside, she discovers the type of “treasure” that could have only been valued by a young boy. She decides to track down the owner of the box, who must be in his 50′s by now, and return the item to him. She does, and is so gratified by the man’s overwhelming joy that she resolves to continue doing nice things for people.

We see Amelie’s various good deeds, which include describing city scenes for a blind man and bringing together two lonely regulars at her cafe. Then we see Amelie fall in love with a young man who collects discarded photos at subway photo booths. The young man, Nino, who works at a pornography store, is unaware that Amelie is attracted to him. Instead of just being straightforward about it, Amelie leads him on a wild goose chase, sending him clues about meeting places and so forth. Finally, Amelie gathers the courage to come face to face with Nino, and viewers are left to assume that they begin a relationship together.

Liked:

• Well, there’s no question that this was a very sweet, lighthearted film. It’s a good one to watch when you need a laugh or an escape from the daily grind.
• I thought the gnome storyline was great! I know this thing about stealing a garden gnome and photographing it in exotic places wasn’t original to this film, but it was executed hilariously here.
• How could you not like the main character? She was so nice and innocent, and truly wanted the best for people. I’m glad she found her own happiness in the end.

Disliked:

• I thought the film ran out of steam towards the end, and could have benefited from a shorter run time. Trim off 15-20 minutes, and it would have been much better.
• Though this was good, it wasn’t “OMG, I have to see that again!” good, nor was it something that will likely stick with me for a long time. I saw it last week, but I only remember the most basic details from it. I don’t think the filmmakers intended the garden gnome to be the most memorable point!

Rating:

Overall, I thought Amelie was a very good film. It’s terrific upon first viewing because it is so fresh, whimsical, and fun. But I’m not sure how well it would hold up on repeated viewings. I give it 4 stars out of 5.

Plot summary (with spoilers): Before becoming a famous novelist, Jane Austen (played by Anne Hathaway) was just a regular young woman living with her parents and sisters in a tiny house in rural England. Mrs. Austen (Julie Walters) is anxious to marry all her daughters off not only to ensure secure futures for them, but also to relieve the financial burdens of the household. After all, Mr. Austen (James Cromwell) is just a country rector with a modest income.

Jane’s suitors include Mr. Wisley (Laurence Fox), the nephew of wealthy old Lady Gresham (Maggie Smith), and John Warren (Leo Bill), who studies with Jane’s father and more or less admires her from afar. Though Mr. Wisley would provide Jane with a very comfortable lifestyle, she cannot fathom marrying the dull, insipid man. This resolution is strengthened after she meets Thomas Lefroy (James McAvoy), a young lawyer who is a friend of her brother’s.

At first, Jane intensely dislikes Lefroy because he is arrogant and aloof, and lacks good manners. But soon his wit, charm, and intelligence begin to work on her, and the two find themselves in love. Unfortunately, Lefroy’s future depends on the whims of his uncle, Judge Langlois (Ian Richardson), who insists that Lefroy marry a woman from an established family.

Lefroy invites Jane, her brother, and sister to come and meet the Judge, sure that the man will change his mind once he sees for himself what Jane is like. But the Judge receives a letter warning him of Lefroy’s intentions, which prompts him to toss Jane and her family out of his house.

Lefroy urges Jane to elope with him. She agrees, but then comes across a letter from Lefroy’s mother, in which she reminds him that he will be the sole provider for all of his brothers and sisters. There’s no way he can earn the money to support everyone, so Jane does the noble thing and leaves. Lefroy marries someone his uncle approves of, while Jane never finds true love.

Liked:

• I didn’t know anything about Austen’s personal life, so I thought this insight into her love life was interesting. I know this was a fictionalized account and not really based on facts, but still. Strange that a woman who never married wrote such enduring novels about love!
• I particularly enjoyed two bits from the end. First, Jane gets the famous opening line of Pride and Prejudice from something Mr. Wisley says to her. And second, Lefroy named his eldest daughter Jane, after the true love of his life.

Disliked:

• It felt like this movie moved at a snail’s pace, even though not much happened in it. Surely they could have cut out 20 minutes or more without doing any damage to the final story!
• Anne Hathaway and James McAvoy had zero on-screen chemistry together. I didn’t buy them as this deeply, madly in love couple.

Rating:

I like Jane Austen books well enough, so I was hoping to like Becoming Jane just as much. But this film was pretty boring from beginning to end, and the story never really grabbed my attention. I give it 2 stars out of 5.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Holly (played by Hilary Swank) and Gerry (Gerard Butler) are a volatile 30-something married couple living in Manhattan. They’ve been together for 11 years already, but still haven’t quite figured out what they want from life. Holly worries about money and finding a job she can love. Gerry is far more laid back and is ready to have kids regardless of everything else being up in the air. Though the two fight passionately, they always make up with even more passion. It’s clear that they love each other.

Then Gerry dies of a brain tumor, turning Holly’s entire life upside down. At first, she is so devastated that she can’t even leave her apartment, but finally her mother Patricia (Kathy Bates) and best friends Denise (Lisa Kudrow) and Sharon (Gina Gershon) come over to celebrate Holly’s birthday. After getting cleaned up, Holly receives an unexpected delivery: a birthday cake and letter from Gerry. In the letter, he explains that he arranged to have a bunch of letters delivered after his death to help Holly get through the grieving process. His first wish is that she get dressed up and go out to celebrate her birthday in style with Denise and Sharon. A shocked Holly eventually complies.

Gerry’s series of letters takes Holly through the next year, forcing her to take action (call some long distance movers to haul Gerry’s stuff off to his mother’s instead of holding onto it forever), make decisions (find a career), and even travel to Ireland where the two first met. Along the way, Holly flashes back to different adventures she had with Gerry, thus allowing the audience to learn more about their relationship. Eventually, thanks to Gerry’s help from beyond, Holly makes a full “recovery” and emerges from her grief with a whole new outlook on life.

Liked:

• I found Holly and Gerry to be compelling characters when they were together. They didn’t exactly have a ton of chemistry, but they still managed to be interesting. Maybe it was just that I couldn’t figure out why they hooked up in the first place. At any rate, I was invested in their love story and wanted to see how things ended.
• Gerard Butler was fantastic in this! He was charming and good-looking, and brought an involuntary smile to my face whenever he smiled on screen. I’ve seen him in other films, but have never been this…mesmerized by him before! He is reason enough to watch this movie, despite not being in nearly enough scenes.
• I was very thankful that Holly did not end up with Daniel (Harry Connick, Jr.). They were not a good couple at all, and I would have felt that Holly’s journey of self-discover was wasted if she had ended up with him.

Disliked:

• That Daniel character was the worst of the bunch. I have a feeling he was supposed to provide comic relief or something, but HCJ just did not pull it off at all. He came across as a buffoon, and I just wanted skip every scene he was in.
• It was weird to see Hilary Swank try to pull off being a 19-year-old college student in that flashback scene to where she and Gerry first met. All I kept thinking was that she looks 30 years old!! And apparently her idea of being a college student is to act giggly and vacuous. Whatever.
• Because of his annoying character on Grey’s Anatomy, I now have an irrational hatred of Jeffrey Dean Morgan. Ugh. And is he really the type of guy that women fall in lust with at first sight??? I look at him and see an overweight average-looking guy. Meh.
• I thought the film ran a bit too long. It dragged in a couple of places and wasn’t as tight as it could have been.

Rating:

Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by P.S. I Love You. This film exceed my expectations and held my interest almost the entire way through. Gerard Butler carries the action when he’s on screen, and the promise of seeing him again was able to sustain me through most of the Hilary scenes. I give this film 4 stars out of 5.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): Jane Adler (played by Meryl Streep) is a 50-something divorcée who runs a successful bakery. Her life seems to be going well: daughter Lauren (Caitlin Fitzgerald) is engaged to a nice man named Harley (John Krasinski), middle daughter Gabby (Zoe Kazan) seems to have things together, and youngest son Luke (Hunter Parrish) has just graduated from college. The only thing missing from Jane’s life is sex, something she hasn’t had since divorcing Jake (Alec Baldwin) 10 years ago.

Jake is now married to the much younger Agnes (Lake Bell), but is having problems on the home front. So when he finds himself alone in New York with Jane on the eve of Luke’s graduation, it’s easy to slip back into old routines — especially with the help of several bottles of wine and countless martinis. The two end up sleeping together. Jane thinks it was a huge mistake, but Jake enjoyed it. He pursues her back to L.A., where they sleep together again. Jane is now officially the “other woman”, just as Agnes was the other woman that broke up the marriage in the first place.

Much to Jane’s surprise, she finds that she’s actually having fun with Jake again. They continue their affair, agreeing to hide things from the children for the time being. But things get a bit more complicated when Jane’s architect Adam (a very subdued Steve Martin) starts having feelings for her. She has a great date with Adam and is now torn between the two men.

The situation unfolds much as you’d expect, with Jake eventually leaving Agnes for Jane. But Jane isn’t sure she wants to go down that same road again, so she doesn’t commit to Jake. Instead, they agree that maybe they don’t belong together and Jane ends up giving Adam a chance.

Liked:

• Meryl Streep was great, as usual. I don’t think I’ve been disappointed with her performance in any film that I’ve seen her in. I don’t go out of my way to watch her movies, but whenever I catch them, I’m always impressed.
• I liked that the partners in this rom-com were mostly age-appropriate. Yes, Agnes was much younger, but that was a deliberate choice used to show Jake’s midlife crisis.
• The secondary characters didn’t have much to do, but I thought Harley was funny. Yes, he was basically just Jim Halpert providing reaction shots to what was going on with the main characters, but still… I laughed at a him several times.

Disliked:

• The entire film prepared us for Jane and Jake to be together. They clearly had fun together and Adam was so much on the periphery that it was natural to root for Jane and Jake to work. So it was kind of weird to see Jane and Adam end up together. That was not the pairing I wanted.
• The film was about 30 minutes too long. There’s no way a romantic comedy needs to go on for two hours!
• Alec Baldwin naked.

Rating:

It’s Complicated is anything but. It’s a straightforward romantic comedy featuring some older cast members, and plays out pretty much by the numbers. It’s fairly entertaining for the most part, but doesn’t do anything to warrant a very high rating. I give it 3 stars out of 5.

Plot summary (with possible spoilers): This film is about two very lonely people who fortuitously meet in London and embark on what could be a rewarding relationship for both. The man named in the title is Harvey Shine (played by Dustin Hoffman), a commercial jingle composer who is being pushed out of work by the younger generation.

Right in the middle of negotiations for a major account, Harvey has to fly to London for his daughter Susan’s (Liane Balaban) wedding, where he is constantly reminded of his outcast status. He’s staying in a hotel while the others are staying in a rented house provided by ex-wife Jean (Kathy Baker), he doesn’t know about any of the stories told at the rehearsal dinner, and Susan has asked stepfather Brian (James Brolin) to give her away.

Meanwhile, we also see snippets of Kate Walker’s (Emma Thompson) life. She works at the airport where she must somehow get harried travelers to answer her questionnaires, and she also cares for her mother Maggie (Eileen Atkins), who suffers from boredom and has a bit of a Rear Window situation going on with her new Polish neighbor. Kate has trouble meeting men, and the ones she does meet are deficient in various ways.

Harvey, depressed about how little he fits into his daughter’s life, decides to skip the reception and return to New York right after the ceremony. Due to traffic, he misses his flight — which ends up not mattering since he gets a phone call saying he’s fired. He goes to an airport bar to drown his sorrows, where he runs into Kate. The two start talking, eat lunch together, and wind up spending the whole day and night in each other’s company. Despite knowing how crazy it sounds, the two decide to give their budding relationship a chance.

My Reaction: Emma Thompson has been one of my favorite actresses ever since her excellent performance in 2003′s Love Actually, so I really wanted to like this film. And while both Thompson and Hoffman were terrific in their roles, bringing both humanity and a quiet dignity to their downtrodden characters, the circumstances of the plot were far too contrived and reminiscent of other works.

What do I mean? Well, the part about spending time together before Harvey had to catch his plane reminded me of Before Sunrise. The part where something happened to Harvey and he couldn’t make it to the rendezvous point reminded me of An Affair to Remember. I’ve already mentioned the Rear Window callback. And the forced “banter” between Harvey and Kate — especially early on — was reminiscent of every romantic movie out there.

But the biggest problem of all with Last Chance Harvey was that I didn’t detect any chemistry between the main characters. As I said, the actors themselves were terrific in their roles, but there was simply no romantic chemistry between them. It could be because Dustin Hoffman is, seventy-freakin’-two years old, while Emma Thompson is just 50… but that’s just my guess.

Overall, Last Chance Harvey ended up being an average film. The story was highly unlikely, but the lead actors (as separate entities) did much to make the movie watchable. Even so, I give it just 2 stars out of 5.