painfully stupid film

Rating: 1/10 (28 August 2007)

It's not the crude stereotypes posing in the places of what should ideally be sympathetic characters, nor the boring, predictable clichés that get passed off as dialogue. It's not the flat, pale, one dimensional, off the peg performances, or even the blatantly sexist underlying assumption that every woman needs a man to be complete. It's just that it's really not funny. Not at all. Watching Jack Black and Kate Winslet ad libbing nonsense word lyrics to one of Black's character's musical compositions, one can't help but hope against hope that they both turn out to have some rare and incurable form of cancer that kills them both before the credits roll. Similarly with Cameron Diaz and Jude Law - although in their case I was hoping more for a car crash of some kind. To describe this movie as mediocre is to do it an injustice - it's actually offensive and deeply patronizing. Apart from that I thought it was great.