Something Borrowed: Reviewed

Tuesday is Dollar Movie Night at the local cinema and the choice movie was Something Borrowed, surprisingly this chick flick was chosen by one the of males that attended.

The trailer for the movie makes it look great – and it’s based off a book. The trailer is misleading though, and for once the dramatic irony wasn’t completely terrible, which is surprising. There are a lot of personal questions that can be contemplated while watching the film and trying to see how the scenario would play out realistically.

The movie came out May 8, 2011 and earned $13,945,368 the opening weekend; which doesn’t cover much of the : $35,000,000 budget – but as of June 5 the gross amount is $36,673,330 (according to IMDB).

The director was Luke Greenfield who was also the producer of Role Models, which was a million times better than this one. Greenfield also directed the movie The Girl Next Door. Having never read the book it’d be unfair to compare the two – Jennie Snyder wrote the screenplay and Emily Giffin wrote the novel.

Kate Hudson plays the attention whore best friend (Darcy) who is the best at everything (kind of like in Bride Wars with Anne Hathaway) and Ginnifer Goodwin (Rachel) is the best friend who lives in her shadow. She went to law school and fell in love with a guy, Dex (played by Colin Egglesfield), but was too chicken to do anything about it so Kate’s character went after him – but now that the two are engaged the truth comes out and the two commit the cardinal sins of friendship and relationships.

It started off great – the first 45 minutes are hilarious and great, and even some midway points; there are relatable characters. John Kransinski’s character (Ethan) resembles the one he played in It’s Complicated – where he knows all the secrets going on. He almost reveals it all on one of the “crew’s” many trips to the South Hamptons – except he gets hit in the nose with a badminton racket.

Steve Howey plays an odd role in this movie – he is best known for being Van in the show Reba and he was also in Bride Wars. He does not look nearly as attractive as he usually does and he plays some weird guy who hits on every girl and is really desperate.

Ashley Williams plays Claire who is one of the girl friends in the show that also comes to the South Hamptons and she hooked up with Ethan at one point, but he’d rather forget that. Ethan says of the South Hamptons: “The Hamptons are like a zombie movie directed by Ralph Lauren.”

The movie has so much potential, but just falls flat in the end.

Rachel and Darcy had been best friends since childhood, BEST FRIENDS, and Rachel became friends with Dex in law school and never let him know how she truly felt; so when Darcy is engaged to Dex the truth comes out, and the lies and cheating and indecision is just so much dramatic irony that it should be irritating, but surprisingly it just seems “eh.” It makes people question whether or not anyone can really be trusted.

Kate Hudson basically played the same character she did in Bride Wars, but in a different way. Hmm… well, this movie was going to get eight out of ten stars, but as a user on IMDB.com the true rating it deserves is six out of ten. The user reviews in all average around five stars.

The ending isn’t what it should have been and it was just annoying. The expectations were high and the movie could have been so much better if it went a different route.

Wanting to see if others felt the same (other than those who attended with me) I checked IMDB and Rotten Tomatoes for a review; decided to stay away from The New York Times for this one. On Rotten Tomatoes

The average rating on Rotten Tomatoes is around four out of ten stars, and a reported 55 percent of audiences enjoyed it.

Richard Brody, considered a top critic of the New Yorker says:

“The movie is merely a joke-stoked soap opera; its bare-bones plot leaves the characters unrealized and the situations undefined.”

It’s disappointing – really expected this movie to be awesome.