Directed by Greg Berlanti. Starring Katherine Heigl, Josh Duhamel, Josh Lucas, Christina Hendricks, Hayes MacArthur. 12A cert, gen release, 115 min.
WHY, KATHERINE, why? It has taken a while for us punters to accept that you are not the badass babe you once appeared to be. One minute, you're bravely speaking out against the misogyny of Judd Apatow's Knocked Updespite starring in the film; the next, you're pretty blond fodder for Gerard Butler in The Ugly Truth. Your role as a simpering Ms Lonelyhearts in Killers, that unlovely vehicle with Ashton Kutcher, only confirmed our worst suspicions.
You, madam, are no Bette Davis. Hell, at this rate you’ll be doing pretty well to emerge as a second-rate Jennifer Aniston.
Life as We Know Itdoes little to boost Heigl's ailing street cred, though it is, thankfully, less oppressively awful than her last two films. The pitch is simple and familiar: two mismatched singletons – prissy Holly (Heigl) and confirmed bachelor slob Messer (Josh Duhamel) – become hapless caregivers to an infant girl when their mutual best friends (Hayes McArthur and Mad Men'sChristina Hendricks) die in a car crash.
Can they adapt to a life of bottom wiping and each other? Will Holly’s blossoming romance with a sappy paediatrician (Josh Lucas) bring an end to their precarious domestic arrangements? And will gravity be adversely affected when Christina Hendricks’s heaving parts are removed from the picture?
These and other questions are answered in an unsatisfactorily uneven tone by director Greg Barlanti's stopgap confection. Heigl and Duhamel may be charming enough company under the circumstances, but for all the chick-flick standards on display (the post-bust-up musical montage, the final dash for the airport), Life as We Know Itstruggles to makes sense of its own genre.
As the film veers implausibly between
Look Who's Talkingslapstick and bereavement with big strings, we can't be sure if we're watching comedy or drama or a simulation of a drunken politician on the back roads after closing time.
