How Do You Know

Director: James L. Brooks
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson and Jack Nicholson
Distributor: Sony Pictures
Runtime: 121 mins. Reviewed in Nov 2011

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Rating notes: Coarse language and sexual references

Lisa (Reese Witherspoon) is a professional US representative softball player who, at 31, is dropped from the national team. Despondent, she starts going out with Matty (Owen Wilson), a self-obsessed major league baseball player who has a very large bank account, a small IQ and an even tinier amount of emotional intelligence. After one of their many break-ups Lisa has a disastrous blind date with George Madison (Paul Rudd), a good-guy banker, who is presently under investigation for fraud. He is manipulated by his father Charles (Jack Nicholson). But will love between Lisa and George survive the dramas that both of them have with Matty and Charles.

The answer to that last question is: who cares?

I surmised I was in trouble with How Do You Know when I noticed that it went for just over two hours. I knew within minutes that these 121 minutes were going to be an early Lenten penance because it became clear that this romantic comedy was neither romantic nor comic. The script is wordy and long-winded, the set-ups are weary, and even these four good actors cannot inject any interest into these dull characters.

How you know when to avoid a film? When you trust a film critic who says that even Reese, Paul, Owen and Jack’s greatest fans will not get their money’s worth from this film. Trust me on this one.

Cheerless romantic comedy in which a champion softball player (Reese Witherspoon), who has recently been cut from her team, worries about her future. She is also trying to decide whether she loves the good-natured but philandering major league baseball player (Owen Wilson), with whom she has been living, or a neurotic businessman (Paul Rudd) whose indictment for stock fraud threatens to land him in jail and ruin the company founded by his hard-driving dad (Jack Nicholson). With its oddly unsympathetic characters endlessly analyzing their every emotion and reaction, the few laughs and insights provided by writer-director James L. Brooks’ script hardly seem worthwhile, all the more so given that subjects like womanizing and single motherhood are played for laughs.
Brief non-graphic sexual activity, a nonmarital situation, promiscuity theme, an out-of-wedlock pregnancy, a birth-control reference, at least one use of profanity, a couple of rough and a few crude words. A-III — adults. (PG-13) 2010