delisay_im

I had my suspicions from the trailers, but decided to give this movie the benefit of the doubt. I should have trusted my instincts. A very rare event, my husband and I only made it 70% of the way through before being too miserable to continue. Like many reviewers here, we question the "comedy" genre. "Black comedy", perhaps. It raised a smile occasionally, initially, but descended to a pervasive negativity that just soured a great day.

It's based on the extreme improbability of a successful and gorgeous young woman falling for the very worst of maleness. But that isn't the real problem. The first downer is that males are all portrayed as pathetic - drugged up, porn obsessed, unfaithful, perpetually adolescent, scatological losers. A depressing and insulting generalisation.

And all the bickering, yelling and negativity..."Humor"?? How is a father being unfaithful to his family in an extreme strip club scene "funny"? Who's laughing - his seven year-old? His wife? Female roles were dreadful and debased, except Heigl's - only two women had roles which did not involve displaying their breasts.

IMPORTANT: Some reviewers must have seen locally censored versions. I've seen comments here such as, "nice and clean", "sweet" and "Apatow includes little or no sex at all in this film." However, the version that I saw had a great deal of crude sexual content - in fact more full-on female pornography than I have seen in a mainstream movie in a very long time. And it really was in-your-face porn-style, rather than tasteful. So watch out which version you get!

Definitely not recommended for general family viewing, nor if you are considering having a baby and want to stay positive about it.

The DVD says "medium level course language"... Well if that's "medium" I'm stumped as to what "high" could be! It's pretty extreme, especially the internet pornography part.

This whole piece seems to be the product of a somewhat unwell mind. The script is awful for being so deeply improbable, and thoroughly depressing. Even part-way decent adolescents - never mind adults - don't behave this way. It's all about compulsive infidelity by all and sundry, and a pathological, repetitive fickleness which becomes exasperating.

All of the characters are drawn almost identically. It's also very disjointed in terms of time-line. Not a polished work.

So...I don't understand how they persuaded such competent actors to be a part of it. Natalie Portman significantly degraded herself too - a terrible shame for such a fine actress who had avoided this trap until now. Oh well..!