Scores a 7 ... just

Rating: 7/10 (15 September 2005)

I actually did laugh out loud a couple of times when I went to see this in the cinema, which can be pretty rare for me. The title's pretty self explanatory so no need for any plot summaries but suffice to say, you'll get almost what you expect. For me this movie was a bit over hyped. I can see that the score for this movie is coming down a bit recently from where it was and due to the timing, can only suspect that this has a little to do with US humour vs. rest of the world humour. Also, it must be noted that leading man Carrell is the main character in the US version of "The Office" which may (or may not) be lending extra weight to his role here and indeed be contributing to jokes which non-US viewers may not get. The movie, as I say, has its funny moments but these tend to be toward the start rather than nearer the end. Like most comedies, it loses its bite half way through and ends up concentrating more on the emotions and relationships rather than purely on the laughs. I found the ending to this to be especially weak and failed to see the relevance of the "musical element", unless the makers were trying to be kooky, which never really works when one tries too hard. Not bad but, due to being about 10-15 minutes overlong because of the repetition of some jokes, not as great as I'd hoped.