Life As We Know It isn’t an average, ho-hum movie by any fault of its lead actors, the lovely Katherine Heigl (Killers) and the dreamy Josh Duhamel (Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen), both of whom, while not close to Oscar-worthy, can succeed when blended with the right co-star. These two have great chemistry in Life As We Know It, but the movie barely grunts out a C grade because it’s schizophrenic. Is it a romcom? A dramedy? A serious film? It tries to be all of the above and ends up feeling like someone jammed an entire TV series in the blender, emptied the bitter contents into a Lifetime Network baking pan and then frosted the final product with so much sugar the average moviegoer would be so shellshocked as to not realize how annoying this lowgrade piece of cinema really is.
The story of Life As We Know It is pretty simple, most of which you can garner from watching the trailer. Heigl plays Holly, a 30-something caterer, and Duhamel plays “Messer,” a 30-something booty call expert and assistant technical TV director for the Atlanta Hawks. They are set-up on a blind date by their friends, Peter and Alison (Hayes MacArthur & Christina Hendricks), and the date explodes before it even begins, with Holly and Messer finding each other horribly repugnant. When Peter and Alison die in a car accident, they leave their only child, Sophie, in the care of their unknowing and shocked godparents, Holly and Messer. This event sets up the rest of the movie, which is really just a will-they or won’t they track meet. Oh and somewhere along the line Josh Lucas (Poseidon) shows up as Sophie’s pediatrician and possible love interest for Holly. That is a tangent that was never needed and hollow at best.
Don’t get me wrong, Life As We Know It has a few lump-in-the-throat moments, but scattered between the good moments is a minefield of unnecessary scenes, gimmick comedy and tossaway characters that in no way, shape or form help us to the ending we know was happening from the start. There are plenty of other worthy films in theaters right now to supplant any possible outings to this boring attempt at a heartstring tug. I’d pass on this until it hits the Redbox.
