Not a comedy

Rating: 3/10 (14 September 2009)

This isn't a comedy; it just plays one on TV. A comedy requires a comic premise, comic scenes, and comic characters, all of which the movie lacks. It's a straight romantic drama that dresses like a comedy because it's too cowardly to present itself seriously, maybe realizing that if it did so, its shallowness would become obvious and offensive. Men are adolescent jackasses, women are snotty bitches: that's the extent of its perception. I've always been a fan of Katherine Heigl's, but in this role, every time she tried to show a liking for anyone or anything, she came across to me as cold and false. What I thought I was really reading in her look and manner was a general sense of distaste and unease for the situation she found herself in; I suspect the feelings may have been her own and not the character's. Which would be natural enough in the circumstances.