Life As We Know It: Film Review

Thank God it’s Friday, but more importantly, thank God it’s a class-free Friday. So I finally get to watch a film outside the realms of my home with a few close friends. Michael wanted to watch You Again but Lorene and I settled on Life As We Know It starring Josh Duhamel and Katherine Heigl.

Overall, it wasn’t a good film, not a bad one either—but if the script and screenplay were worse, it would have had been Katherine Heigl’s pitfall movie (considering that she’s starred in lofty good films: Knocked Up, 27 Dresses, The Ugly Truth).

But let’s not point fingers here to the two actors why the film sucked—a bit. First of all, the story was quite superficial: a married couple dies in a car accident and leaves their 1-year-old daughter to their closest friends Holly (Heigl) and Messer (Duhamel). The two were reluctant at first even to the point of hating each other, were forced to live under one roof by a blunt egocentric social worker, but sooner realized that they had chemistry (and sex) and finally fell in love. End of story. Quite a shocker, isn’t it?

And let me babble that Holly was a complete reprise of Heigl’s previous role in the Ugly Truth. In fact, the Ugly Truth and Life As We Know It have similarities: (1) quirky career-girl meets attention-grabbing sex-expert guy, (2) quirky career-girl is single and has a dormant sex life, (3) attention-grabbing sex-expert guy helps quirky career-girl gets the guy of her dreams (surprisingly, doctors in both films), (4) attention-grabbing sex-expert guy begins to feel jealousy but confesses in the later part of the movie that assholes do fall in love, and of course, (5) quirky career-girl remains constantly quirky throughout the entire story.

So the film, in general, utilized extremely overused formulas in making romantic-comedy films. But then again, on the other hand, there were also some goods (like including an orphan toddler in the plot and how the two lead roles will be able to resolve their feud and parenting issues despite the fact that they’re not in a relationship and the baby isn’t theirs biologically in the first place). Sad thing is instead of concentrating on the better elements of the film, the producers decided to highlight Holly’s obsessive compulsive behaviors and Messer’s need for random one night stands.

And if you think of the movie that way, you’ll then realize the epic irony of the superficial plot and the title of the film. The appropriate title would have been Life As We Know It From A Quirky Career-Girl and Attention-Grabbing Sex-Expert Guy’s Point of View.

My final verdict would be 2.5 stars out of 5. Initially, it was just 2 stars, but the added 0.5 was due to the reasons that I am an avid Katherine Heigl fan and a desperate hopeless single who appreciated the only lesson of the film: even assholes fall in love.