I feel as if John Krasinski should know better than this. He has shown just through his character on "The Office" and with his directorial debut "Brief Interviews with Hideous Men" that he is more than just a face for the hip crowd looking to expel their narcissistic world view on any who care to listen. Krasinski seems to be an intelligent, level-headed guy who, despite what others might be afraid to bring up, really knows the truth and can admit to it whenever. So why, has he chosen such duds of romantic comedies to star in? In the case of "Something Borrowed" we have a film that has a nice little hook:it is just as much about friendship as it is about love, but what director Luke Greenfield does to separate this film from every other rom com actually isn't much. In fact, this is so paint by the numbers, we can even see past the little plot twist the film thinks its throwing at us near the end. No, it wasn't a shocker, if anything it made the movie feel more tedious.
Basically what we have here is a nearly two-hour pity party for Rachel. Rachel is played by the lovely Ginnifer Goodwin who can seemingly make any act as innocent and sweet as it needs to be. Rachel is in love with Dex and has been since she first laid eyes on him in law school. It is her more out-going, ignorant best friend Darcy though who ends up with him. Where we come in is at the point where Darcy and Dex are set to exchange vows, but not before Dex re-evaluates and decides if this is all what he really wants. This all sounds very melodramatic and probably too much drama than one cares to deal with when looking for a few hours of escapism and it really is, but what makes this whole charade even worse is that we simply don't care for any of these characters. Dex, as played by soap opera alumni Colin Eggsfield, is essentially lifeless. The guy is a pretty face, sure, but behind that we see nothing, especially no reason as to why two women are internally battling over him. We can look past that too though, because the biggest break in logic comes when we must believe Dex would have chosen to be with Darcy over Rachel in the first place.
Kate Hudson, who, lets face it, has continually dropped in picking good projects over and over again for a few years now may have been the perfect choice to play the hard-party annoying Darcy because she herself is so tired of being stuck in rom com land. Hudson doesn't even allow for Darcy to be the least bit likable except for in one all too short scene. We don't know why there is such a dilemma, if these people would just loosen their polo's and cardigan's they would surely be able to realize they were all with the wrong people and then be able to sort everyone to where they need to be. But by the time this actually happens, we're exhausted. We are sketchy about Dex, we really just want Rachel to end up with Krasinski's Ethan, but we all know that can't happen. It just can't, not in this world. It is early on when we are introduced to a minor character played by Steve Howey, a complete stock character, the man child relative who constantly hangs around and seems to always be more creepy than charming that we realize this movie is going nowhere fast. It is so busy trying to be more intelligent and sophisticated than others of its genre that it only seems to stumble more often and thus limit itself to not even delivering the simple pleasures of a play it by the book chick flick.
"Something Borrowed" can be summed up by one of it's only clever pieces of dialogue, "The Hampton's are like a zombie movie directed by Ralph Lauren." But instead of "The Hampton's" you can easily insert the title of this film. It is all very clean cut and the characters all dress in clothes that are all very monochromatic and do things like play badminton because they literally have nothing better to do. It is a zombie movie, but without the building excitement or scares just the overall effect of lifeless bodies walking around doing things that don't make a whole lot of sense. Krasinski is the voice of reason here, and another reason to believe he is better than this, but even with his strong words and observations this film can;t rise above what he critiques his friends of being. Go ahead and skip "Something Borrowed" because there certainly has to be a better rom com in the pipeline that is coming soon. If not, the ladies are in for a long summer.
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