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Movies & TV Movies & TV Reviews

Something Borrowed

SOMETHING BORROWED (Luke Greenfield). 110 minutes. Opens Friday (May 6). See listings. Rating: N


Something Borrowed is an appallingly apathetic chick lit adaptation about a Manhattan singleton who drunkenly falls into bed with her best friend’s fiancé, then spends a summer continuing the fling while feeling, like, really bad about it. The one good thing about the film is that someone finally understands that we’re all sick of Kate Hudson.

Seriously, whoever talked her into taking this role deserves some kind of casting award. Hudson’s long since stopped being any fun to watch, but there’s something perfect about plugging her into the role of Darcy, the spoiled, flighty, grasping Bridezilla who flops around a summer house in the Hamptons while her maid of honour (Ginnifer Goodwin) acts on her long-simmering crush on her groom (Colin Egglesfield). She’s still no fun, but at least she’s supposed to be annoying instead of endearing.

Trouble is, no one else is any fun either. Jennie Snyder Urman’s script, adapted from Emily Giffin’s bestselling book, aims for giddy farce, with lovers hiding behind doors and listening in on voice mail, but its engine is powered by such an unpleasant betrayal that it’s difficult for us to enjoy anything that happens.

It also doesn’t help that the secondary roles are drawn (and played) so broadly that they may as well have been digitally grafted in from a bad sitcom, or that the closest thing to a sympathetic character is played by The Office’s John Krasinski as a neutered, indignant scold.

You won’t root for anyone to be happy you just want them to go away and do their damage elsewhere. (When one character tells another, “I’ve always loved you,” my first thought was: Really? Why?)

Perhaps the most depressing thing about Something Borrowed is that it could have been better. Director Luke Greenfield’s last feature, the boy-meets-hooker comedy The Girl Next Door, was so much more intelligent and entertaining than its log line suggested, and I’d hoped he’d work similar magic here.

But there’s just nothing to go on. Every character is so selfish and blinkered that we start hating them long before they realize they’re supposed to hate themselves.

normw@nowtoronto.com

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