Bad acting, choppy writing

Rating: 5/10 (19 June 2008)

Everyone in this movie except for Mark Wahlberg could have been recast, with positive results, and no one would have noticed. Leguizamo is wasted as some geek math teacher with no common sense. Everyone in the movie seems to have inappropriate emotional responses to things not yet in evidence. Some of the time the characters' facial expressions do not in any way match what they are talking about; they talk about very tense, upsetting things with no expression. The leaps of logic that people make are in no way logical, and Elliott's hissy fit screaming "give me a minute! give me a minute! give me a minute!" does not fit with his character, and really, it isn't as if people are harassing him for a decision. There was no chemistry whatsoever between Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, strangers on a bus could have been more connected than this "husband and wife", even with the purported marital problems that seem to have been exaggerated. The way Elliott talks about Alma to Julian as they exit the school, it seems as if the marriage is hanging by a thread and he almost seems to be setting Julian up to be prepared for Alma to be an angry, distant, mentally unstable twit. Julian for his part treats his child as if she were about to go postal, which she never does either, and at times his character seems forced, as if only thrown in to have another "star" name in the credits.