For starters, the plot is paper thin and extremely generic. Reese Witherspoon plays a softball player who gets cut from the USA team, since she is apparently too old and slow by athletic standards. Naturally, she is thrown into an awkward love triangle. One guy is played by Paul Rudd, a business man, who encounters some legal problems that I honestly could not follow all that well. The second guy is a baseball player played by Owen Wilson. Jack Nicholson plays Paul Rudd's character's father and boss. I didn't use the characters names because that's how generic and ridiculous the plot and characters are.
Now for the good, the bad, and the ugly of "How Do You Know."
The Good: Reese Witherspoon is no stranger to romantic comedies, so naturally she does well with this genre. And she is just way less annoying than someone like Jennifer Aniston or Sarah Jessica Parker. Also, she has good chemistry with Paul Rudd, in my opinion. I actually find him quite funny and enjoy him in movies. Finally, Jack Nicholson is a Hollywood legend and I thoroughly enjoyed his role in this film. Although he only had a few scenes, he also had some of the few moments of actual humor. These three talented actors did the best they could with the beyond mediocre material. Also, the cinematography for this movie is way better than it deserves to be, given the overall quality of the finished product. "How Do You Know" was filmed by the wonderful, Janusz Kaminski. He is the only cinematographer that I know by name so I have deemed him my favorite. He has filmed all of Steven Spielberg's films since "Schindler's List," in 1993. Think about all the beautiful films he has done during that time, including "Saving Private Ryan," among others. "How Do You Know," certainly does not look as good as the Steven Spielberg films, for painfully obvious reasons. However, the set up of scenes, characters, settings, etc was nicely done and I enjoyed the final shot in the film. I felt it ended a whole lot better than the rest of the film had been.
The Bad: "How Do You Know" is way too long. It's literally crazy, unbelievable, and baffles me. It is almost 2 hours long! One of the key rules to movies is that no comedy should ever be longer than 2 hours and most should try to clock in at about 100 minutes or so. Apparently James L. Brooks never got that memo and opted to make his more recent movie dangerously close to 2 hours. Honestly, I thought it was longer than that, since it seemed to drag on for a while. The plot is weak, basically what is to be expected from your average romantic comedy these days. The characters are never developed and there really is no reason for Reese Witherspoon to be into either of the guys because she barely knows either of them, although Paul Rudd is the obvious choice to love. Also, the movie is just not very funny. The lines, in general are pretty bad...although not nearly as bad as "Burlesque"...but that movie was actually fun to watch and had Cher in it. This is a shame because James L. Brooks used to be so good, making great television shows like "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" and "The Simpsons" and great movies I have yet to see like "Terms of Endearment" and "As Good as it Gets." I guess he's done making quality work, which is a shame, but that's why there's reruns and DVDs everywhere you look. One final negative thing, the score. It doesn't really stick out and is just very run-of-the-mill and exactly what you expect from a romantic comedy, most of the time...cheesy and such. This is a shame because Hans Zimmer did the score, and normally he is phenomenal. Then again, he usually is working on incredibly well made pieces of film, like "Gladiator" and "The Dark Knight." I guess he knew he didn't have much to work with, and either way he got a nice paycheck I assume.
The ugly: OWEN WILSON! He is so horrendous and awful. I do not understand how he is famous. He is not funny, cannot act, is not charming or likeable, has one of the most annoying faces that I have ever seen (I guess to go with her ridiculous hair), and treated Reese Witherspoon like crap the entire movie, and she is utterly charming and wonderful. Every single scene that Owen Wilson was in both angered me and made me cringe, made me want to vomit a little and cause myself some physical pain. I literally cannot express my dislike for him any further, without using profanities. He is even worse than when I saw him in the first two "Meet the Parents" movies and that dumb dog movie with Jennifer Aniston. It's horrifying.
Well there's the good, the bad, and the ugly of James L. Brooks' "How Do You Know." Take from it what you will. In all honesty if you do see it, just rent it, it's not worth the price of admission for the theaters...and now there are tons of better options currently playing. Really the only reasons to see it would be Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, and Jack Nicholson. The script is disappointing, there are approximately 976 better romantic comedies out there to rent, and then there's that man whose name I will not mention again in this review because I literally might scream and my whole family is sleeping, and I assume that would wake them up. 1 out of 4 stars....Oh boy...
-Joseph Sbrilli
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