Review of In the Land of Women (2007) by Brian D — 07 Aug 2010

Hmmmm... Let me just start by saying that this movie sucks.

You'd think that with Adam Brody, Kristen Stewart and Meg Ryan, this movie might be decent. Oh wait, it is Meg Ryan we're talking about here.

First of all, the premise of this movie is pretty stupid. A porn writer gets dumped by his actress girlfriend and decided to go and take care of his grandmother for a while. Across the street lives a stereotypically dysfunctional family of a mom (Meg Ryan), a dad and a teenage daughter (played by Stewart).

As time goes on, Brody gets to know both the mom and the daughter pretty well across the street. Since he's at the "oh so perfect age" of his early twenties, that puts him in the territory apparently of the 40-50 something mom and the conveniently underage daughter.

The mom is having a rough time with her husband, who's having an affair. In order to deal with it, she wants to make her life look perfect by trying to make everything into a "Crate And Barrel catalog". The daughter doesn't understand her mother and the two don't get along.

As Brody just sits aimlessly by, listening to their two sob stories, lending the perfect "listener's ear", both fall in love with him and during the course of the film and he kisses both of them. But then the mom finds out he's kissing the daughter and everything goes to crap, at least for a minute. Oh, and did I mention the mom has breast cancer...? Yeah...

I thought the ending was poignantly stupid. This is just another one of those "everything is screwed up, better just move on" stories that seem to be so popular lately.

The acting is really nothing special, with Brody doing the best job. Meg Ryan just seems to be standing there, looking fake, which is actually perfect because that's who the character is. Stewart does a great job playing a slightly confused lovesick teenage girl (go figure...!) but the overall feel of the movie is just generally crappy. There's certain plot elements/points that don't make sense either, like when Brody runs into a tree and passes out. At that point, it's like WTF?

Anyway, like I said, this movie just sucks.