Review of Life As We Know It (2010) by Shiira — 11 Oct 2010

The rich are different, but not this different, not this cheeky. We can only hope that life doesn't imitate art, since romantic comedies as we know it, are growing more bizarre with each new entry in a dying genre whose modern-day practitioners have butchered so many hearts on celluloid, we stopped counting, and this latest entry, "Life as We Know It", is just one more rom-com that seems less concerned with the mysteries of love than the plot machinations which tears love apart before it even has a chance to coalesce.

The rich can't be this twisted, can they? With friends like the Novaks(Hayes McArthur and Christina Hendricks), who needs any enemies? Messer(Josh Duchamel) and Holly(Katherine Heigl) have the worst friends ever, friends that on some level, must resent their single lives and the liberties that goes along with it, especially the liberty which retains them the right to pursue dreams, unencumbered by baggage.

He wants to direct NBA basketball telecasts; she wants to expand her bakery into a restaurant, but after Peter and Alison, all too conveniently, die on cue, their baby, the baby of discontent, seemingly, throws a monkey wrench into the career trajectories of Sophie's legal guardians, who are probably the least qualified people for the job: two emotional idiots, too self-centered for child rearing, and too stupid to realize they've been "punk'd" from beyond the graves.

Why don't they object more fervently to the conditions? Strangest of all, the Novaks have a stipulation in the will that Holly and Messer should live in their house with Sophie, like an arranged marriage, complete with child, which makes "Life as We Know It", a rom-com with accidental Indian undertones.

If Heigl sang(as she performed "Bennie and the Jets" in Anne Fletcher's "27 Dresses"), then the film would have the makings of an accidental Bollywood musical. Doomed from the outset, the set-up, singles being so gung ho about moving in together with somebody else's baby, is so hard to accept, since their first date went so horribly wrong.

It's not emotional blackmail, the need to fulfill dead friends' wishes, that keeps them together, it's the contrivances set forth by a narrative which isn't altogether different from John Landis' "Trading Places".

Like Mortimer(Don Ameche) and Randolph Duke(Ralph Bellamy), who both allow somebody equally unqualified(a con-man named Billy Ray Valentine(Eddie Murphy), a financial naif) to take care of their business, their "baby", a wager must also have been the inspiration for Peter and Alison's idea to bestow full custody of Sophie to such incompetent parental candidates like Holly and Messer.

Life, as "we" know it, real life, that is, not the diegetical life which sometimes breed convincing human simulacrum, but more often than not, plays as a backdrop for conceptual "people", would entail that some family member from the deceased pair step forward and claim the Novak baby.

But "Life as We Know It" doesn't want anything to infringe on the supposed hilarious domestic hijinks of first-time parents, or the supposed heartbreak of first-time parents breaking up, and then the poignant reconciliation, again, at an airport, of first-time parents kissing.