Film Review: Life As We Know It

About the film

Life As We Know It is a romantic comedy film that was released in 2010. The film has a run time of 114 minutes and is rated 12A.

Plot

Years ago, Holly and Messer (Eric) were set up on a blind date by their mutual friends Peter and Allison but it did not go well at all. Peter and Allison being married though means that Holly and Messer are forced to see each other now and again, especially when it concerns their god-daughter Sophie. When Peter and Allison are killed in a car crash and Holly and Messer learn that they have been named as Sophie’s guardians, they are in absolute shock. They can barely stand to be around one another, let alone bring up a child together and have no idea how to handle the situation.

Deciding to try to honour their friend’s wishes, Holly and Messer move into their house and begin to learn how to be parents. However, both Holly and Messer are single and have their own lives. How are they supposed to work together and be parents for Sophie when they can barely manage their own lives?

What I thought

Although not a fan of babies, or films about babies, I actually wanted to see this film. Katherine Heigl is one of my favourite romantic comedy actresses and Josh Duhamel certainly isn’t bad to look at. I didn’t go into this one with high hopes but was expecting something easy to watch.

Heigl plays Holly, a single woman who runs her own business but doesn’t really have time for love. Duhamel plays Messer, a guy who loves the ladies but not commitment. The two characters had been set up by friends Peter and Allison but they didn’t even make it to a restaurant because it started off so badly. However, as they have mutual friends and are god-parents to their daughter, they are forced to spend time with one another. When their friends die in a car accident, Holly and Messer are left to look after Sophie, Peter and Allison’s baby daughter but neither know where to start with being parents and even worse, they can’t stand each other.

Holly and Messer were two completely different characters but great contrasts to one another. Heigl plays Holly who is very serious about her café business and wants to do well for herself. Messer doesn’t want anything serious out of life at all apart from in his job working behind the scenes for the Atlanta Hawks basketball team. It was clear from the beginning that these two characters did not get along and that Holly was the more grown-up of the two and the more responsible. Messer, on the other hand, was the funnier of the two characters with his slacker attitude.

Although the death of Peter and Allison happens very early on in the film, it was still and extremely sad event. I think that this was mostly due to being able to see how hard it hit both Holly and Messer and what kind of a mess everyone was left in afterwards. Their poor daughter Sophie is left in the care of people who have no idea how to be parents but at least they have been a part of her life up until this point. Holly and Messer don’t want her being with strangers so decide to do what Peter and Allison wanted. Going from such a sad event, we then go to hysterical scenes of Holly and Messer trying to cope with a very young baby. They don’t know how to change a nappy, nor how to do anything else really so there was a lot of trial and error going on.

At the same time as learning how to be parents to someone else’s child, Holly and Messer also have to learn how to get along and actually live with each other. I really enjoyed watching them trying to cope to organise their lives, especially as they both had completely different schedules and things to do. They also had to try and fit in their personal lives, more Messer than Holly though in this department. I have no idea how I would cope in this kind of situation but it would be a lot to deal with on top of having your best friends die so suddenly. Watching Holly and Messer attempting to cope was really funny and although their situation was pretty bad, it did provide a lot of comedy.

While the comedy in this film was great, the romance wasn’t nearly as good. With this kind of film, the outcome is always pretty predictable which I am more than ok with but it is the way that the characters get there that count. Holly and Messer couldn’t stand each other at the beginning of the film and while they are forced to live together, they still didn’t seem to like each other very much. At one stage, they seem more comfortable with each other than they once did but there just wasn’t any passion or chemistry between the two really. The end outcome of this film was just not believable due to the events happening throughout the film. If there had been more going on with the two characters, rather than separately, I would have believed it more.

Life As We Know It is a pretty average romantic comedy due to the lack of good romance. The plot and the comedy aspects though were what really made this film watchable.