Sappy snoozefest

Rating: 3/10 (13 September 2011)

Well, at least the marketing department must have done their job properly - the poster made me think that I was going to see "The 40 year old virgin" with a twist... needless to say that at some point I was not only rolling my eyes with disbelief but also wondering if I should not get up and leave - alas, I did not and had to endure yet another outpour of deeply illogical hamfistedly conceived schmaltz right at the end. I see that the film received mostly positive acclaim here which makes me wonder if I was one of the few gullible slobs who could not figure out the marketing buzz and ended up in the movie theatre, right beside two women in their 30s - basically the audience that would probably love this so called "romantic comedy"... yep folks, it is supposed to be a comedy - the only problem being that most of the jokes are already in the trailer. Someone falls in love with his high school sweetheart and marries her but after 20+ years of marriage she has had enough of him so she not only has an affair but also tells him she wants a divorce. He is such a schmuck you know - wears funny shoes and is not up to her style so she is somehow entitled to move on. From this moment on, we are supposed to laugh at the poor cuckold and his feeble attempts to gain ground. But wait, although his wife is no longer interested in him, for some strange reason, he is the wet dream of a teenage babysitter - a notion that has some credibility only in the parallel universe of the scriptwriters. To make things complete, the cuckold's son is in love with the babysitter - luckily, there is no kindergarden girl being in love with the son to prolong this chain of unanswered love and affection. Anyway, the poor wretch finds his only consolation in drinking at a bar and whining to strangers about his lost suburban happiness and then - voila! - there goes our deus ex machina: a debonair gentleman who knows how to charm all the ladies. Sure enough he volunteers to reshape the hapless whiner so that the latter does not spoil the atmosphere at the bar with his constant and unwanted confessions... of course the zero to hero trip succeeds and the former loser turns into a lustful predator, managing to bed 9 women in no time. Credibility? Well, yeah - see my above remark. Unfortunately, this is not where it ends. There is a sugary monologue about ice cream and first love which - in the above context!! - made my bowels churn and probably made the women beside me sigh. There is also a twist right at the end which follows the film's own logic i.e. why not throw in more unlikely stuff, it may be fun. To me - it was not and I will be avoiding anything titled "romantic comedy" in the near future.