The Unseen Movie Review - Life As We Know It

By Robert Dixter Oct 8, 2010, 13:49 GMT

Holly Berenson (Katherine Heigl) is an up-and-coming caterer and Eric Messer (Josh Duhamel) is a promising network sports director.  After a disastrous first date, the only thing they have in common is their dislike for each other and their love for their goddaughter, Sophie.  But when they suddenly become all Sophie has in the world, Holly and Messer are forced to put their differences aside.  Juggling career ambitions and competing social ...more

I’ve written about Katherine Heigl in this column before, and it’s usually not very nice. Well, it’s about to get worse since I just read that she makes $15 million per film. That’s a lot of money for someone who lacks real talent, actually it’s a lot of money for someone who has a lot of money.

Heigl has been attacked in the past because of her comments. She said the writers on Grey’s Anatomy weren’t giving her anything to work with and therefore she felt she shouldn’t submit her name for an Emmy (she also had conveniently already won an award for that role the year before), and then followed that up with revealing that she thought Knocked Up (her breakthrough film role) was a little sexist. Heigl’s defense has been to say that she is opinionated and why are people surprised that she is vocal about what she thinks? Would they rather she keeps her mouth shut and pretends to be something she’s not? It’s not that you’re opinionated.

I applaud you for that, and for sticking up for what you think is right. It’s how you go about saying it. Don’t reveal to a major publication that you’re not worth an award because you think the writing on your show has been below par. That’s not opinionated, it’s classless. If you don’t like the writing, go talk to the writers, don’t talk to the press. If you think the movie you’re appearing in is sexist, talk to the director about changing the script, don’t wait until it becomes a hit and launches your film career to trash it. That’s not opinionated, it’s petty and mean.

All this is in the past and everybody with a blog has already commented on it so why am I bringing it up again? Because people are still going to see her movies! The Ugly Truth and 27 Dresses were both decent hits (granted The Killers was not) and now it seems she’s made another romantic comedy called Life as We Know It. Will she ever make anything other than films with tired ideas that seem to have been recycled from bad sitcom ideas? In Life two people have to take care of an orphaned child after their mutual friends die and of course they end up falling in love. The baby makes them a family and brings them together. This premise sounds like it would have been laughed out of the old UPN offices and they greenlit The Secret Diary of Desmond Pfeiffer.

Katie’s co-star is Josh Duhamel. I like Josh, he’s not a great actor but he strikes me as the frat boy who drank a lot in college and one drunken night someone told him he was attractive enough to be an actor, so after throwing up over the balcony he packed his bags and headed out to Los Angeles. He’ll never win an Oscar but he seems perfect in films like Transformers where explosions are the real stars. He seems sort of miscast in Life but maybe I’ve been watching Revenge of the Fallen too many times on HBO (I’m still trying to figure out the plot). So Katie, good luck with your latest film, I won’t be going to see it. I just don’t think the writing in it is very strong.