Review of Something Borrowed (2011) by Shiira — 01 Jun 2011

Three months into rehearsals, indie stalwart Sarah Polley bowed out from "Almost Famous" where she was was set to play the role of a legendary rock groupie. Citing her own personal realization that she wasn't the sort of girl who could light up a room as the reason for quitting on the spot, Kate Hudson(originally slated to play William Miller's sister Anita) took over the role of Penny Lane from the maverick actress, parlaying this piece of manna from heaven into an Academy Award nomination.

Polley was wrong, of course. She could be an aurora, if pressed. During the rave scene in "Go", the moviegoer sees what would turn out to be a rare occurrence, the sight of Polley having fun, no less, dancing, which must have convinced Crowe that he had found his main Band Aid.

Although the illumination in the warehouse is minimal at best, Polley manages to move above the darkness of the dance floor. You could say she lights it up. While the official record shows that it is Hudson who adroitly demonstrates(in a scene which may have intimidated Polley) the ability to be the center of attention, a life force, when she brightens the natural light in a hotel room hootenanny with her best stewardess imitation("Ladies and gentleman.

..), the body of work the slumping actress has produced since her 2000 star-turn suggests that the director of "Away From Her" might have been equally up to the task. By some fluke coincidence, in "Desert Blue", Hudson, playing a Hollywood actress who befriends a group of rural outback kids after the two-bit town gets placed under quarantine, asks her newfound friends, while huddled around a campfire, "What if this is our last night? What do you want to do?" Skye promptly kisses Blue.

Polley, as Nicole Burnell, sits down with her dysfunctional family for one final disquieting supper, in "The Sweet Hereafter", a movie about the last night on earth,which takes a decidedly anti-Hollywood approach to an impending catastrophic disaster.

In retrospect, it's a pity that Hudson couldn't simply borrow Penny Lane, then give the role back to its rightful owner. With each passing year, Hudson seems to be incrementally becoming famous for being famous.

If Sarah Polley was a household name, she would be known for good movies, not disposable junk such as "Something Borrowed", yet another forgettable entry in a long line of bad rom-coms for this one-time ingenue.

In "Bride Wars", like Rachel, a successful defense attorney, who, at thirty, feels as if she's fast becoming an aging spinster, the best friend, Emma, a schoolteacher, fights back, when a similarly aggressive Hudson character behaves badly.

"Something Borrowed" has the slight advantage of being less cartoonish than "Bride Wars", but Hudson, more or less, remains the same. Angry over Emma's disinclination to reschedule her Plaza wedding after an unfortunate same-day double-booking, Liv throws down the gauntlet at the schoolteacher's spray tanning session, whose outcome results in the lawyer's oldest and dearest friend looking either like an Oompa Loompa, or Q-Bert.

The association should end right then and there, as it would in real life, but the war escalates to epic proportions, concluding with Liv's original plan to play an incriminating spring break DVD of Emma during the actual ceremony, come to fruition.

This time out, it's the best friend who's in the law profession, but Rachel is no more smarter than Emma, as evidenced by her continuing friendship with Darcy, even though she had intervened on a perfect love match.

In pertaining to the girlfriend switcheroo at that long ago bar booth, a date which should live in infamy from Rachel's vantage point, the film seems to be under the pretense, however naively, that Darcy unwittingly stole Dex away from her alleged best friend.

Rachel, as written, is so stupid, rooting for this willing doormat proves to be a chore. The moviegoer waits in vain for an epiphany in Southampton. Alas, Rachel never figures out, because "Something Borrowed" never admits, that Darcy's poaching was a calculated act.

In any other case, nine months of incessant talk about one guy would present itself as an indication to most best friends that their closest confidant is unequivocally in love. Without this knowledge, the affair Rachel has with Dex gets weighed unfairly against her.

Morally, it would still be wrong, but not indefensibly so. When Darcy asks Rachel to write her wedding vows, "Something Borrowed" recalls the play "Cyrano de Bergerac", which perhaps reveals the film's problem may lie in its umpteenth presentation of the old "Pygmallion" trope.

Whereas Cyrano had a large nose, Rachel wore unflattering glasses back in law school as an explanation for her feelings of inadequacy. Now, as a finished product, a transformed beauty, Rachel should address what went down the night that Darcy asked Dex out, but the torrid argument only covers the second betrayal.