Movie Review - 'How Do You Know'

How Do You Know Starring Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson Directed by James L. Brooks Rated PG-13

The cover of this week's issue of Entertainment Weekly hailed "The Return of Reese," referring to the fact that Reese Witherspoon's starring role in How Do You Know is her first on-screen since 2008's Four Christmases. Perhaps even more noteworthy, though, is that it's "The Return of James": this is writer-directory James L. Brooks' first film since Spanglish in 2004, and personally I'm pretty glad to find that he's still got it.

This is a romantic comedy, yes, but Brooks brings a sensibility that's refreshingly different from what we're used to getting out of the genre in recent years. Witherspoon plays Lisa, a career softball player who's just been cut from Team USA for being too old, and thus too slow. She goes through a "what do I do now?" phase that plays out with an honesty you might not be expecting.

Lisa starts dating Matty (Owen Wilson), a relief pitcher for the Washington Nationals. Wilson is impressive in his willingness to restrain himself in this role; he resists allowing Matty to become a caricature, while still fitting into the stereotypes you'd expect. He's a womanizer, naturally, but he's naive enough to be surprised when he learns that Lisa expects monogamy. She says she feels like she's on an assembly line, just one in a long row of women who pass through Matty's bed. Rather than shrugging her off, Matty waxes philosophical about interpersonal relationships in general. It's not terribly deep, but it's not annoyingly cliched, either. When Wilson smiles and, as he does multiple times during the movie, concludes with, "Good talk," we feel for him as much as we do for her, because it's obvious that he's actually trying to be a "good guy"—not just to score but because that's who he truly wants to be, if only he could figure out how.

Lisa then meets The Other Guy, a recently-indicted businessman named George (Paul Rudd) who fills another stock-character position, but Rudd, like Wilson, adds some unexpected depth to the part. His life is in shambles, and it turns out his father (Jack Nicholson) might be to blame. Lesser writers would paint George as a complete doormat, like a puppy stuck in the rain who garners sympathy because he's so terminally pathetic—and lesser actors would play him that way—but here Brooks allows Rudd to infuse the character with an underlying optimism that's hard not to smile at.

There's a standard rom-com dilemma setup here, but how it plays out is what makes How Do You Know worth watching. The interactions between Rudd and Witherspoon are frank and true-to-life. They awkwardly talk over each other, nervously interrupting one another. They don't say what you're expecting them to say, and they don't behave how characters in a movie like this are supposed to behave. When they're poised to have a Big Moment right before a bus arrives, the driver doesn't know he's supposed to wait for the music to swell before pulling up to the stop. There's humor in such events, of course, but there's also a realism to them, an attention not only to detail but also to the way the world actually works.

Brooks' direction underscores such moments with shaky handheld camera movements and awkward close-ups at the most uncomfortable of moments. He draws his audience in, forcing them to squirm just when his characters are doing the same on screen. Then he backs off and lets things settle down. It's supposed to be fun, afterall.

There's a cliche I hate using for the very reason that it comes up so often (which, of course, is why it's a cliche to begin with), but it holds true here: if you've seen the trailer for How Do You Know, you've seen pretty much all of the funny moments in the film already. Given that, it's worth seeing for the drama aspects, for the storyline that avoids becoming too contrived, for the writing that's not as rote as you might expect, and for good performances from the leads. There's also a nice supporting role from Kathryn Hahn, who you might recognize from HBO's Hung, and a to-the-point cameo from Tony Shalhoub where he sort of sums up the movie's point in a single, concise, stoically-delivered sentence.

There's nothing terribly shocking about How Do You Know—nothing overly risky, you might say—but there's nothing too offensively generic about it either. Brooks is a filmmaker who respects his audience enough to speak to them as adults, and as a result his story plays out as one that actually involves adults, rather than cliched (and uninteresting) stereotypes of them.

Comments

[Osmo]

Finally some three star reviews. I'm a bit tired of the polarising attitudes of some critics when it comes to evaluating decent films. These things matter when contemplating whether to watch a certain film or not. Hooray for three stars!!