How Do You Know? - C

In theaters. Rated PG-13, 116 minutes. Trailer.

Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson, Jack Nicholson and Reese Witherspoon is a cast that is too good to fail. Except they did in How Do You Know. It's not their fault though, the blame for this bloated, boring, unfunny and out of touch abomination is respected writer/director James L. Brooks (Taxi, Terms of Endearment, Broadcast News, As Good As It Gets). The film follows 2 people through a difficult point of their life. Reese Witherspoon is Lisa, a 31 year old softball player on the US National team (?); she gets cut from the team and it sends her into a personal crisis. Paul Rudd is George, an investment banker working at his father's (Jack Nicholson) big time Washington DC firm when he becomes the target of an SEC investigation. Click below for more on HDYK:

After fits and starts, the two end up getting to talk and there are sparks of a relationship. He is distracted by his personal crisis and she is in a dumb relationship with Mattie (Owen Wilson), a shallow Major League baseball pitcher on the Washington Nationals. Nicholson plays his typical bombastic asshole with a heart and looks ridiculous in size 800 suits. The film follows the two principals as they lamely move through their crises and relationships with a happy ending.

The trailer looks funny enough, but the film lacks any sense of dynamism or realness. Each character is boring and wooden with basically no character development. The Lisa character is a hot softball player.......and that's all we know about her except that she is insecure and easy. We don't know anything about George except that he's honest and likeable. Is he good at his job or just a lucky son? Owen and Rudd do what they can with the shell of their characters, but they are just being themselves and that gets old after a while. Witherspoon is terrible due to Brooks constantly shooting closeups of her wistful, contemplative face.

Brooks' style doesn't work. Each shot is drained of life because of the perfect lighting and Hallmark Hall of Fame film stock. Combine that with a lack of any character worth rooting for or caring about and you have a really bad film. There are a few Rudd laughs (hard not to do), but mostly you'll just be looking at your watch.