Alternate title: Movie Moan.

Spectacularly funny beginning. In a way, they did to The Devil Wears Prada what His Girl Friday did to the Front page–switched the gender of the assistant/reporter. Bullock v. good here, kid adequate. But if you can imagine Streep and Hathaway becoming lovers in Prada–go ahead, try it. No really, are you trying? Okay, now you’ve got some idea of what goes spectacularly wrong with this flick. The romance is EMBARASSINGLY UNBELIEVABLE. Wow. CANNOT express how unbelievable. Also, the dad is simply from some other, horrible movie about a father who drives his son to suicide. Just warps the comedy. (It’s like the public humiliation of the girl in Much Ado About Nothing–you never get back to the lightness.)

What’s truly disappointing about all this is that Bullock and what’s his name–the Boy–have pretty good comic timing: verbal and physical. They step on each other’s words and look awkward when they’re pretending to be cuddly very well. Also, so much of the humor is good, like the beginning set-up. But then, just as it goes for simple romance, it goes for simple laughs. Compare the super set-up of the dog/eagle joke with the non-set-up of the
nude collision joke. (When’s the last time you took a shower without knowing where the towel was? First grade?)

I’m really sick of movies that take hyper-competent women, send them to somewhere with–I don’t know–TREES, and assume they will become completely helpless. I mean, they won’t even be able to carry a suitcase. PLUS: she’s supposed to be Canadian. Just who in Canada can be surprised at living conditions in Alaska?

You keep thinking of different ways the romance could have gone–including nowhere, with some other development of these two: what’s wrong with mutual respect? Is romance the ONLY way we grow? Why not have the kid have an older brother that she falls for? Or–geez–why not have her take on the dad? She eats guys like him for breakfast in her job–she can’t manage it in Sitka?