I hadn't heard much good about this one beforehand, so my expectations going in were pretty low. While I can't really say that it was a good movie, it was actually pretty cute. The writing was mediocre at best--in a few places the dialogue made me roll my eyes--but the two leads, Mark Ruffalo and Reese Witherspoon, managed to bring the film up several notches. I've been a fan of Ruffalo since You Can Count On Me; he brought emotional depth to his character where a lesser actor would have choked on the sappy script. And while I can't say that Witherspoon was particularly inspiring in this one, she played off of Ruffalo very well; they had very good chemistry. What else? John Heder was funny enough, although he more or less re-hashed his shtick from Napoleon Dynamite. He and Donal Logue were pretty much the only ones that managed to get a chuckle out of me. The movie's not long on comedy and isn't what you'd call brilliant, but for a dinner-and-a-movie kind of date it fits the bill pretty nicely.

Viewed: 9/16/2005 | Released: 9/15/2005 | Score: C

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I was actually quite amazed by this movie. Despite the fact that it got an excellent review from Entertainment Weekly--who are usually quite snobby--I found it to be pretty boring. Rachel McAdams continues to underwhelm me--she plays everything so straight. Not that she does anything particularly bad, she's just uninteresting. The same goes for the rest of this movie. The plot was so straightforward, so linear. I kept expecting that there would be more, that just around the corner we'd have some mind-boggling plot twist, but it never came. It never even felt particularly suspenseful to me. (Juliette got a little nervous during the climactic scene, but even she found the rest of the movie pretty flat.) I don't know, I just expected more from the director that brought us the Scream trilogy.

Viewed: 9/8/2005 | Released: 8/3/2005 | Score: D

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