Six friends are enjoying life without responsibilities, until married couple Leslie and Alex fall pregnant. This is quickly followed by Ben and Missy's pregnancy. Life changes, as it becomes harder for the friends to meet up. The remaining two friends, Jason and Julie, have been best friends for years and live in the same New York apartment building. Following their friends route into parenting, they begin to question whether they too would like to have kids. They decide on a plan to have a baby together and carry-on with their platonic relationship. They share the childcare and they each begin a new relationship with other people. The plan appears to be going very well.
Life as parents becomes increasingly difficult for the once passionate Ben and Missy, as they have become distant and resentful of each other. An honest dinner conversation, between all the friends, on a ski trip brings everything to the surface. On returning home, they decide to separate. Meanwhile, after some kind words from Jason about her at the dinner table, Julie comes to realize that she harbors feelings for Jason. She later admits these feelings to him during dinner in a restaurant. He rejects her, as he is in love with his current girlfriend and doesn't see Julie in this way. She moves out of their apartment to Brooklyn and they continue to share custody of their child.
Later, his relationship ends because they have different views about children - she doesn't want to have any. Jason then realizes that he has feelings for Julie. He goes to her Brooklyn apartment and and confesses his feelings. She is scepitcal at first but he manages to convince her.
Life as parents becomes increasingly difficult for the once passionate Ben and Missy, as they have become distant and resentful of each other. An honest dinner conversation, between all the friends, on a ski trip brings everything to the surface. On returning home, they decide to separate. Meanwhile, after some kind words from Jason about her at the dinner table, Julie comes to realize that she harbors feelings for Jason. She later admits these feelings to him during dinner in a restaurant. He rejects her, as he is in love with his current girlfriend and doesn't see Julie in this way. She moves out of their apartment to Brooklyn and they continue to share custody of their child.
Later, his relationship ends because they have different views about children - she doesn't want to have any. Jason then realizes that he has feelings for Julie. He goes to her Brooklyn apartment and and confesses his feelings. She is scepitcal at first but he manages to convince her.
The film is really funny and a has some good comedy in it.The best thing to say about the film is that it does have a real pace to its dialogue and I liked some of the snappy delivery and tone of it, some of it being funny but just generally it had a good rhythm to it. Problem is that the rest of the film really doesn't do much that works particularly well. For me it wasn't "bad" just weak, but this was because I didn't hate the characters quit as much as I can imagine that some will. They are hard to like and it doesn't help that the plot is built around a device that requires them to be narcissistic, selfish and spoilt for the vast majority of the running time. They have some changes in their characters late in the game (the changes you know the anti-couple will have from the moment the first scene finishes) but by the time these changes occur, you've probably given up caring about these spoilt unlikeable people.
The cast keep that at bay for a while – although I was a bit behind from the start because I found both Scott and Westfeldt to be the least of the cast – a problem considering they are the leads. Hamm, Wiig, Rudolph have the charisma to carry some of the busier scenes but I have no idea why they had O'Dowd doing an American accent that is terrible (when he keeps it up long enough to notice). Fox, Burns and a few others add starry names but not too much else.
Friend with Kids has some energy to it and at times the snap of the dialogue is entertaining but the film can never get away from its main problem which is that the core plot and characters are both predictable and hard to like. These two things combine to limit how interested the viewer is in the film and with fewer laughs than there should be, there isn't much beyond the famous faces and snappy delivery to hold the interest.
The cast keep that at bay for a while – although I was a bit behind from the start because I found both Scott and Westfeldt to be the least of the cast – a problem considering they are the leads. Hamm, Wiig, Rudolph have the charisma to carry some of the busier scenes but I have no idea why they had O'Dowd doing an American accent that is terrible (when he keeps it up long enough to notice). Fox, Burns and a few others add starry names but not too much else.
Friend with Kids has some energy to it and at times the snap of the dialogue is entertaining but the film can never get away from its main problem which is that the core plot and characters are both predictable and hard to like. These two things combine to limit how interested the viewer is in the film and with fewer laughs than there should be, there isn't much beyond the famous faces and snappy delivery to hold the interest.
star rating: 3 stars
No comments:
Post a Comment