[Movie Review] WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS
Sigh! If only nearly every other critic out there hadn’t got in with this easier-than-Lindsay-Lohan ‘zinger’ ahead of me eh? Anyway, stumbling intro aside, let me get my major “rant” out of the way:
Check the poster out. Yes, I’ll admit that putting these two in a movie alongside each other was a stroke of genius. After all, who wouldn’t pay to see one of the world’s most feminine looking actors verbally sparring with one of the world’s most manly faced actresses? But “Cameron” and “Ashton”?
Since when were we on first name terms with these two? I mean, really, come on? I spent the entire 80s and early part of the 90s putting my entertainment needs in the hands of the likes of Mr Schwarzeneggar, Mr Stallone, Mr Van Damme etc. and we never went on first name terms on the poster with them. What’s going on? McConaghey and Hudson have made TWO mediocre movies together and they’re not forcing some uncomfortably informal “Kate and Matthew” schtick down our throats. I’m the dude who’s spent the last twenty-eight years trying to get my father to stop making me call him “sir”. I just don’t think I’m willing to rush into some sort of ‘relaxed’ relationship with the guy who, in 2003, starred in the triple bill that was Just Married, My Boss’ Daughter and Cheaper By The Dozen and the woman who took a lead role in The Sweetest Thing.
Anyway, rant over, let’s get down to gutting this fucker and working towards justifying the final, over generous rating it’s going to end up with.
I’m an occasional fan of the odd romantic comedy here and there. What can I say? I’m in touch with my feminine side; I’d put When Harry Met Sally in my Top 100 of all time favourite movies, I can just about get through an episode of The Hills without stabbing myself to death with a spoon via my anal passage and, every so often, I’ll flick through the pages of the women’s weekly magazines like Take A Break and Bella at work, come across the problem pages and quietly mutter “You go girl!” to every whining housewife’s tale of suffering at the hands of a neglectful husband.
But the romantic genre comedy genre is playing it safer and to a more increasingly uninspiring template then a Harry Potter film. (Check out my review of The Goblet of Fire to refresh yourselves with my easy-to-use tick-box guide for those movies!). And what I am utterly adverse to is seeing movies churned out within this genre that play so safely to a “formula” that they border on absolutely insulting the intelligence of every viewer in the room, even the ones dumb enough to consider Paris Hilton a “pop star”.
Think I’m being overly harsh? 98% of the romantic comedies of the last twenty years, probably dating back even longer in fact, have followed the exact same template:
1. Boy meets Girl. Rather contrived plot occurrence forces said characters to instantly hate each other for thoroughly unrealistic reasons.
2. Contrived plot occurrence develops in thoroughly immature and underdeveloped fashion to put said Boy and said Girl in almost constant contact with each other so ‘differences’ of opinion, lifestyle etc. can rub off on one another.
3. Boy and Girl will have respective best friends, standing off in the background, making comedic asides about this thoroughly ridiculous situation between the two of them. This is commonly known as the ‘Sarah Silverman/Adam Goldberg factor’ and, by law, requires one or both of these characters to be played by a second-stringer from a hit sitcom who is a favourite with TV audiences/a stand-up comic on the rise/someone from The Daily show AND for said character to signal the end of Act II with a variation of the line “Oh my God, you’re totally falling for him/her/it!” [NB: If the final word in this sentence is “it” then you’re watching Howard The Duck]
4. Singular plot contrivances are not enough so subplot contrivances will be added in the form of casting some forgotten character actor from a decade ago, who used to be quite well acclaimed early in his career, in some “mentor” role for either Boy or Girl character. Think Alan Alda/Elliott Gould/Donald Sutherland etc.
5. Boy and Girl will invariably fall in love with one another but deny it for the longest possible time because a movie studio’s lack of respect for a cinema going audience does not extend to charging them full ticket price for what would only amount to a ten minute fucking movie!
6. An absolutely contrived, clunky plot complication will arise at the exact moment that said Boy and Girl are about to connect that will force them apart and thus push the film’s running time safely into the area of “feature motion picture” and away from the under sixty minute mark labelled “TV pilot”. Said complication could be easily quashed with something as simple as reasonable communication but this is never the case. I repeat, NEVER!
7. Either Boy or Girl will decide they have to leave whatever location the whole movie’s events are occurring within, whether it be by plane, train, boat or automobile. But not space ship, as this could be construed as “original” and this genre tries to avoid such a trait.
8. Whichever character is NOT leaving will find out that the other is and will be required to make an obligatory mad dash to whatever location they are leaving from, in order to stop them.
9. The “chaser” will catch up with the “chased” and make a grand verbal declaration of love that has been written by a spotty faced script doctor who has never met a woman let alone been intimate with one, but who dreams of saying exactly this sort of ‘shit’ to a female of the species (who isn’t inflatable) one day!
10. Whatever ridiculous plot contrivance that occurred to cause this whole inconceivable miscommunication will be INSTANTLY forgotten. Long, lingering kisses will be dispensed with as the camera pulls out and some inane pop, romance ballad plays out over the end credits.
And there you have it! That’s your guaranteed romantic comedy make-a-movie formula. And how does What Happens In Vegas fair up? Points 1 to 10 are dutifully covered, some with more attention and care then others but whatever does work, and work well, is pretty much instantly undone by all that doesn’t work in all the other areas. Someone sat down in front of their Final Draft software and thought that the definition of originality and the evoking of important romantic comedy chemistry lay in simply pegging Ashton Kutcher as an allegedly “typical” member of the male species (a lazy, overgrown adolescent who always leaves the toilet seat up, can’t commit to a relationship, and seems generally content to get constantly drunk and fester in his own filth) up against Cameron Diaz as a motivated, career-oriented (the film suggests these are bad qualities to possess in a woman?) neat freak who’s ready for marriage and children, and invariably the biggest life-force sucking vacuum in any a party. Yawn, yawn, yawn.
What Happens In Vegas works wonderfully in all the small background details. Namely all the stuff the writer and director are only too happy to write off as “insignificant” and leave under-developed, whilst pushing the uncharismatic, annoying and whiney leads down our throats instead. The throwaway character work by Dennis Farina and Treat Williams is a nice, quick reward for those more discerning film fans slowly losing the will to live with the rest of what the film is offering. We all knew Treat Williams made the journey from respected character actor of the 80s to straight-to-video B-movie action king of the 90s, but when did he make the journey back to doing little character pieces in mainstream genre flicks like this?
Then there’s Rob Corddry and Lake Bell as the respective “best friend” characters. Believe everything you’ve heard and read about these two. They make the movie bearable. They are funny, alive and every single occasional high point in the movie is down to them. How long is it going to take Hollywood to realise that there is a movie aching to be made about ‘background’ types like these two huh? Kudos for not having them fall predictably into each others arms by movie’s end too. This is the best double-tapped case of out and out scene-thievary since Jack Black and Todd Louiso in High Fidelity.
The movie as a whole is a bit of an infruiating affair. Just as you start giving yourself over to the film, and forgiving it for its flaws in the way you often have to for films of this ilk, it does something so goddamn infuriatingly awful that you just can’t help but get annoyed at the severe insult to your intelligence that is occuring. The ending is so bad and ill-judged that it ruins pretty much everything that has gone on before it. Are you seriously telling me that Diaz’s smart and savvy career woman would get so easily heart-broken by Kutcher, so much so she will give up her side of the millions, the marriage, her career, her life in New York etc. only to fall straight back into his arms because he took a boat ride and made a corny speech he found in the back pages of a rejected script from one of the later, bad seasons of Dawson’s Creek? Come on!
Don’t let the strong US box office (and expert example of counter-programming against Iron Man) wrong foot you into believing this is of stronger quality then it actually is. Youtube the hell out of the Corddry and Bell scenes and dispense with the rest of it, until you find yourself bored on a cold, rainy Friday night and looking for a rental in Blockbuster.
Perhaps the biggest insult and kick to the groin (or “junk punch” as the film says!) is that the strongest laughs within the entire film are saved for the end credits, post-film coda. Any film that claims to be a “comedy” but which makes you sit through such tawdry, unoriginal and life-sapping nonsense only to zing you so brilliantly as you’re leaving the cinema, isn’t going to earn a lot of respect.
5 Responses to “[Movie Review] WHAT HAPPENS IN VEGAS”
most of the romantic comedies i’ve seen with Ashton Kutcher have been pretty good, A Lot Like Love is another example
Patrick, buddy, REALLY?
Look, get on Netflix or something, and get yourself There’s Something About Mary, Knocked Up, Coming to America, Sleepless in Seattle, 50 First Dates, The Break-Up, When Harry Met Sally, The Wedding Singer, Bird on a Wire, Groundhog Day, Splash, The Secret of My Success, Working Girl, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Doc Hollywood, Tin Cup, Bull Durham, One Fine Day, About a Boy, Roxanne, Manhattan AND Keeping the Faith.
I’m not saying EVERY movie I’ve just listed is an out and out classic but there’s some classics in there, some throwaway flicks and some under-rated gems. But each and every one of them is a more solid and accomplished viewing experience then ANYTHING with “The Kutch”.
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