![]() A woman shouldn’t be complicated if she has any expectation of entering into the joys of living with a husband she holds in contempt and babies who shit diapers full of toxic waste. Which is what is expected of Holly and Eric, that they will marry and be miserable, like everyone else… not necessarily married to each other, but certainly to someone, eventually: Eric even makes the disparaging comment that Holly’s chances of engaging in marital terror are getting less likely at her age, when she’s no longer merely single but “complicated” (with the unspoken undercurrent being that she better take whatever she can get at this pathetic point). But everyone else they meet in the movie - such as the Novacks’ neighbors, when they move into the Novacks’ house to minimize Sophie’s dislocation - is married and miserable. ![]() The movies tries to convince us that Holly is some kind of uptight in a way that is meant to represented by the fact that she owns a Smart Car, but she was happy, too, as a successful business owner - of a catering joint and bakery, a womanly sort of job - and has recently attracted the attention of a fine doctor (Josh Lucas: Management, Poseidon). Because why should they expect get off easy? Eric had a happy-go-lucky life of working as a technical director for the local sporting franchise, a manly sort of job, and boinking whatever tasty blondes crossed his path. I’m sure you don’t need me to tell you that Eric and Holly will eventually come to not hate each other as they bond over the joys of diapers full of toxic baby shit. Oh yes, this is absolutely a romantic comedy. And they never even asked Holly or Eric if this was something they’d like to deal to with, even as a remote possibility.Īmerican, land of the meanspirited romantic comedy! This these so-called best friends do even though they are fully aware of the deep and abiding loathing that exists between Holly and Eric, which must qualify the Novacks’ decision as the Most Obnoxious Act of Passive-Aggression ever. but they get stuck with each other when their respective best friends, Alison Novack (Hendricks: Mad Men, Firefly) and her husband, Peter (Hayes MacArthur: She’s Out of My League, Are We Done Yet?), are killed in a car accident and happen to have previously named Holly and Eric as guardians for their baby, Sophie (Alexis, Brynn, and Brooke Clagett). Katherine Heigl’s ( Killers, The Ugly Truth) Holly Berenson and Josh Duhamel’s ( Ramona and Beezus, When in Rome) Eric Messer hate each other - Hate. Life as We Know It is as hideously offensive as, say, Knocked Up - both share the cheery theme of “People who aren’t ready to be parents and don’t want to be parents should just suck it up and deal with it, and they will fucking learn to like it” - except no one even has the momentary pleasure of getting laid. ![]() ![]() It’s practically a right-wing wet dream, in which people who don’t even have sex are being punished for daring to live lives just the teensiest step outside what a certain narrow - and narrowminded - slice of American conservatism perceives to be normal. But that’s only the tiniest of the many cinematic crimes of Life as We Know It, which pretends to be something hip and fresh and is in fact relentlessly conventional, even retrograde. First of all, any movie that kills off the smashing Christina Hendricks in the opening 20 minutes deserves to be shot down on the basis of that alone. ![]()
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