Style Over Substance

Rating: Null/10 (12 June 2005)

This movie is a classic example of style over substance. The wardrobe of the two lackluster leads is very expensive, tight-fitting, and very appealing to some. The house that the two live in is very expensive, something most people watching it could never afford, and a few may not even want it. This is an example of bad writing, the jokes are recycled, but just because the jokes are used doesn't mean the movie couldn't be funny, unfortunately the two leads are so horribly inept at performing comedy they waste what could have been a perfectly good movie. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt largely are two people that are nice to look at, nothing more, for them to do comedy is too much, it is something they just can't do.
There have been some horrible movies lately, while this one is formulaic and predictable it is not as bad as let's say Kicking and Screaming. The movies only good point is Vince Vaughn, a proved comedic actor who makes otherwise predictable material much funnier, his frantic pace makes his character about the best in the movie. You can appreciate Vaughn because in this movie, which almost has no unattractive or perfectly dressed people he is the only one that does not look plastic. And it was amazing to me to see no average looking people in this movie, sad to say a lot of movies suffer from that, people not as skinny as a pole, with all the curves, or with all of the perfect muscle definition, and it hurts a comedy, which is what this movie is supposed to be, but perfect people rarely are funny.
The plot is the kind of over everyones head fare that you got to great success from Ghostbusters, and to solid effect from Men in Black, where everyone is just acting so crazy, doing almost impossible tasks. Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are two assassins working for different agencies suddenly assigned to kill each other. The humor is supposedly suppose to come from the one-liners and the situations that arise from their strained marriage, and the awkward circumstances that come from their hits. Little of it provokes any laughter, but occasionally it would provoke a raised eyebrow, as some of the situations were just strange. One of the supposedly very funny running gags was Brad Pitt's inability to remember it the couple had been married 5 or 6 years and this was supposed to be funny.
Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are not exactly brilliant thespians either, so they really can't act their way out of a movie like this. As these two often do, they look so bland and uninspired, but that's the way they always are, they're not actors they are nice to look at, and there is no better example than this movie that movie rely only on sex appeal, and no plot, writing and especially acting. And of course you have the mandatory dress up the lady in something sexy, in this case it was a dominatrix's outfit. But the sexy leads don't cut it. This movie could have been done better with better casting. Instead of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt, cast Ben Stiller and Janeane Garofalo, two comedians that can make movies work.
By the time the finals came around I was disinterested in this movie, I had gotten to the point where I realized the purpose of this movie was to have you look at the two sexy leads. The jokes were sometimes painful, but you can't really blame the writer, since his jokes and his screenplay were made so horrible by the performances. I just saw this movie because there wasn't anything else to see. So I guess it was a good way to waste two hours, or two hours were wasted for no good reason I can't figure it out.