Life As We Know It

reviewed by guest lecturer Will Tooke

Full disclosure: this is not the sort of film I’d normally go and see. A cursory YouTube of the trailer (see below) confirmed my worst fears. The blonde chick from ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ and that army dude from ‘Transformers’ inherit a one-year-old girl – the way you do – with amusing but ultimately touching results. My inbuilt rom-com alarm was flashing red, anticipating the need for a post-cinema insulin shot, given how sickly sweet the damn thing looked.

And so off I traipsed into the cinema, pen sharpened; ready to be profoundly irritated by gags about babies pooing and weeing and vomiting, a bodily-function-backdrop for the main characters to learn something new about each other and maybe themselves. Ugh. As predicted, director Greg Berlanti gets a lot of mileage out of nappies being changed, to the extent that you could well suspect some sort of underhand product placement deal with Pampers. And yet…and yet…I quite liked it.

There, I said it. My anticipated bile towards this new rom-com was perhaps due to the fact the last one I sat through was ‘Did You Hear About The Morgans?’, in which Hugh Grant and Sarah Jessica Parker charmlessly play two divorcees who have go on the run from the mob and learn to love each other again. To pass the time, I secretly wished that the mobster would get a move on and just shoot the pair in the head already; I imagine the scene with Sarah Jessica Parker would look like a horse getting put down. But I digress.

Yes, I quite liked ‘Life As We Know It’. After all, aforementioned blonde chick from ‘Grey’s Anatomy’ is Katherine Heigl, who proved her comedic credentials in 2008s ‘Knocked Up’, a film which holds the dual distinction of being hilarious and horrifying in equal measure (the latter mainly due to the fact I now know what ‘crowning’ is. Those who remain blissfully unaware: beware the urge to Google). Here, Heigl plays Holly, a thirty something who is impossible not to like. Similarly, whilst I view ‘Transformers’ with the level of hatred usually reserved only for the very worst war criminals, at least this film gives male lead Josh Duhamel the chance to act in his role as Eric, which must be nice for him, since running from and/or shooting at big space robots doesn’t really allow much range.

Absolutely, its by the numbers in terms of it’s rom-comminess, and the will-they won’t-they dynamic in the relationship never really works because the genre means you can see the ending coming about 5 minutes into the film. Set in the pleasant suburbs of Atlanta, the film begins with the two leads hating each other and 100 minutes later ends with that emotional dash to the airport – an ending, incidentally, I swear they used at least three times in Friends. Actually, in hindsight, the film is packed full of clichés. Holly is kind and runs her own cake shop, because, ya know, she’s a women, and women cook and have feelings and stuff. By contrast, Eric irritatingly insists that people call him by his surname, sleeps with a lot of women, and is a bit insensitive because, like, he’s a bloke. And just incase you weren’t one hundred and ten percent sure he’s a manly man, he even works for TV sports channel. Being a jock is literally his living. The only way the character could’ve been made anymore more masculine is if he had done push ups with his penis.

Naturally, a comedy fat neighbour – a slave driver to her own, poor husband – can’t resist having a jolly good perv on our Eric, but then neither can the Token Gay Couple™ (who live in socially conservative Georgia? Poor bastards…). Half way through the film, up crops a hunky doctor with a sexy southern accent, purely to add a dash of love triangle dynamic to the whole affair. Poor bugger, the audience know as soon as he appears that he is, of course, just a plot device; a dishy decoy and nothing more.

Speaking of plot, you could accuse me of giving away far too many spoilers, but then that is sort of the point of rom-coms, you know exactly what your getting before your bum even hits the seat on that second date. Be honest, if you knew nothing about this film other than its genre, you’d have a pretty decent stab at guessing the rough storyline. And once you understand and accept that this light, cliché ridden romp is basically all that rom-coms ever are, all that they ever can be, then its hard not to like Life As We Know It. But despite the film being so generic, strangely enough, the reason why this film isn’t as irritating as it should be – and why other critics haven’t been so kind to it – is because tonally it’s all over the place. But that’s actually to its strength, that it resists being quite so totally clichéd. So whilst there is the familiar rom-com fodder mentioned above, there is also a pretty subversive streak of humour running throughout – jokes about paedophile paediatricians, child killers and dropping babies provide a welcome piquancy to what would have otherwise been a singularly sweet cinematic offering.

After all is said and done, Life As We Know It is never going to win any Oscars. You know it, and I know it. But dear reader, crucially, the film knows that too. After all’s said and done, Life As We Know It is a pretty amiable way to spend a couple of hours, will raise a few genuine, unexpected laughs and doesn’t feature Sarah Jessica Parker. And what more than that, dear reader, could you want of a rom-com?

Degree: 2:1

As a rom com it’s a good film….not liking it for it’s cliches would be like not liking a bond film

because of the guns and girls; it’s part of the deal.

It’s well made, and raises some good laughs. I was as surprised as you are!

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