Emotional minefields

How Do You Know (2010)
Certified: 14
Duration: 116 minutes
Directed by: James L. Brooks
Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson, Jack Nicholson, Dean Norris, Kathryn Hahn
KRS release

James L. Brooks is famous for his star-studded casts and his latest film is no exception. His Terms of Endearment (1983) had won five Oscars with a cast that included Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson, while As Good As It Gets (1997) brought two Oscars for Mr Nicholson and Helen Hunt.

How Do You Know comes with a $100 million price tag. Once again it’s an enviable cast whose salaries accumulate to nearly half the film’s cost and Mr Brooks’s fussy production – he has been working on the film for five years – has seen the cost inflate. However, the film squanders its cast so shamelessly and presents us with a plot that lacks any sense of storytelling to it.

Reese Witherspoon plays Lisa, a young woman who is a professional softball player and who has always dated athletes. At the moment she is going out with Matty (Owen Wilson), an egocentric and womanising baseball player who is happy living the way he is. However, inadvertently enough, he is falling in love and asks Lisa to move in with him.

Then there is Charles (Jack Nicholson) who lives in the same block and who is not a bit worried about his son George (Paul Rudd) who runs their company and who has just been served a federal subpoena. In between we find Annie (Kathryn Hahn) who is George’s assistant. She is single, pregnant and not happy with Charles’s treatment of George.

The lives of Lisa and George change when they end up on a blind date together; it is a very botched-up date, but the two start to see something in each other which will have them re-evaluate themselves and their choices in life.

The film has isolated moments in which the actors manage to connect with each other despite the awful script, especially the scenes shared between Reese Witherspoon and Paul Rudd. However, as the end of the film approached, I was still unsure as to the why of the entire goings-on, the whole indictment plot and the lengthy duration. The film takes a lot of time to develop its hand which makes everything seem to be too much ado about nothing.

Ms Witherspoon and Mr Rudd are the ones to emerge unscathed from the affair. Mr Rudd once more brings another amiable “loser” to the screen while Ms Witherspoon is her usual chirpy self.

Mr Wilson plays his usual dazed and egocentric self, a characterisation he has repeated in many films ad nauseam. Mr Nicholson is playing Jack as he usually does but here even he is not really sure of the direction his character is taking. And his performance is a far cry from those he delivered in the other films directed by Mr Brooks. Meanwhile, in a secondary role, Kathryn Hahn really delivers as the volatile and tense assistant.

While looking good and sporting a glossy production, How Do You Know is too self-conscious and safe. Its characters seem to talk a lot with no purpose, ending up sounding as if they were reading out of a self-help book.