When dealing with the whisper-thin acting ranges offered by Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel, its best not to tax them. She can cock an eyebrow and look adorable when surprised. He can cock his head and look handsome when bemused. Together they have those two emotions covered and then some. When asked to do more, as they are called upon to do with excruciating frequency in LIFE AS WE KNOW IT, the results are gruesome.
As Holly and Messer, the sparring best friends of a couple who bequeath them joint custody of their one-year-old daughter, Sophie, they must be grief-stricken, starry-eyed, ticked-off, and, when not snarling and snapping at one another, smooshing lips with wild abandon. Smooshing lips, no problem. Everything else, alas, falls in the category of badly written, badly acted, or a stultifying combination of both.
The script is contrived, stale, and sophomoric. It features endless montages of the joys and perils of unprepared adults coping with the antics of a one-year-old that feature nary a novel image or situation. Poop is intrinsically the stuff of belly laughs, as is regurgitated baby food, both of which find themselves on Hollys face. Messer is Peter Pan who loves em and leaves em after they pay for dinner. Holly is waiting for Prince Charming, who arrives in person of Josh Lucas as Sophies hunky pediatrician. Neither of them rise above the level of a hazy plot outline brought to life by actors who have a knack for not being able to tap into the deeper places of the human psyche. Top it off with a baby that oddly never changes over several months, and a mad dash to the airport so that one of them can declare true love for the other when all the other clichés have been exhausted.
In all fairness, the baby is adorable. So are the neighbors of the upscale home bequeathed to Holly and Messer along with Sophie, even if there is a further oddness in the way that all the women and half of one gay couple lust for Messer, but none of the straight men seem to notice that Holly is gorgeous.
Tragedy and slapstick in the same piece of work are not necessarily mutually exclusive, and in fact can play off of one another admirably in the right hands. Chaplin comes to mind. LIFE AS WE KNOW IT attempts to hit every emotion, including those, inherent in the human condition and fails to connect with any of them. Instead, it evokes the one that it didnt try for, irritation.
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