Movie Box Review

There's something infectious about watching the people behind a brand-new TV hit enjoy their success, and at tonight's PaleyFest salute to this year's break-out comedy hit NEW GIRL, the pleasure of the cast and producers bubbled over.  

To an unusual extent that the panelists acknowledged themselves, the dynamics among the cast members and writers seemed not unrelated to the relationships in the show.  By the time creator/showrunner Elizabeth Meriwether had finished kicking off the session and introducing the episode being screened, it came as no surprise later on when star Zooey Deschanel summarized her character Jess by saying she was equal parts the 13-year old versions of herself and Meriwether.  Similarly, the good-natured snarky bickering between Jake M. Johnson (Nick), Max Greenfield (Schmidt) and Lamorne Morris (Winston) could have been outtakes from any given episode, and there seemed to be a gray area between where the actress Hannah Simone left off and her character Cece picked up.

Everyone concerned spoke several times of the show's efforts to deepen and develop the characters as the show goes on, and it turned out that the screened episode "Injured" (which airs tomorrow night) was a standout example of this principle in action.  "Injured" may be the first episode of New Girl that takes place entirely outside of the apartment all the characters except Cece share, and it centers on Nick rather than Jess.  In the course of the episode, Nick has a health scare, and the tone of the episode resembles the bittersweet 50/50 more than New Girl's usual carefree celebration of character eccentricities.  More interestingly, the episode has a very loose, casual feel akin to an F/X comedy.  Not incidentally, "Injured" was directed by Lynn Shelton, whose reputation is in semi-improvised indie relationship comedy-dramas like Humpday and the excellent upcoming Your Sister's Sister--whether "Injured" was actually partly improvised or just very well scripted (by J.J. Philbin), it shows New Girl starting to put some distance between itself and its cutely charming roots.  

There were little in the way of spoiler revelations in the course of the evening--as producer Jake Kasdan noted, the series has few enough continuing storylines, they didn't want to ruin any of them--except that Dermot Mulroney and Jeanne Tripplehorn will appear in an arc (Mulroney as a Jess love interest), and that shippers hoping for the seemingly inevitable Jess/Nick coupling will have to wait for a while.  

With Glee fading, New Girl is now at the center of FOX's Tuesday night, with an audience slightly smaller than CBS' 2 Broke Girls but with far more pop cultural and critical cachet.  The show has plenty of time--years, undoubtedly--to work out how and where they want the series to go.

As romantic comedies with Kate Hudson go, SOMETHING BORROWED isn't so bad.  After her spectacular debut in Almost Famous, Hudson's become something of a brand name for dreadful rom-coms that nevertheless make money (How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days, You, Me & Dupree, Fool's Gold, My Best Friend's Girl and Bride Wars are among her milestones), getting to the point where you might want to groan just seeing her face in a trailer.  In recent years she's tried to branch out a bit with The Killer Inside Me and Nine, neither of which worked out too well at the boxoffice.  In Something Borrowed, she relinquishes the leading role to Ginnifer Goodwin (although she still takes first billing), opting for the more colorful foil part, and she seems as relieved as we are that she isn't the one pining for true love.

 

In Something Borrowed, based by Jennie Urman Snyder on Emily Giffin's novel, Goodwin plays Rachel, whose life is essentially defined by two relationships:  her childhood best-friendship with Darcy (Hudson) and her romantic longing for Dex (Colin Egglesfield--his name is like a James Ivory wet dream), whom she met and fatally introduced to Darcy when they were in law school.  (Also she has her confidant friend Ethan (John Krasinski), who behaves so much like the "gay best friend" in old movies, it seems odd that he's heterosexual.)  Rachel, who never stands up for herself and has always let the boisterous, self-centered Darcy take the lead, allows Dex to slip through her fingers when Darcy shows some flirtatious interest in him, and now Darcy and Dex are engaged and Rachel is vastly exceeding her quota of longing looks.  But one night a drunken, self-pitying Rachel reveals her pent-up feelings to Dex, and it turns out he feels the same way, and--welcome to the plot.  From then on, it's a mix of farce--Rachel, Dex, Darcy and Ethan all share a Hamptons summer house, where everyone has something to hide and Darcy is trying to fix Rachel up with hunky idiot Marcus (Steve Howey)--and low-boil drama, as Rachel tries to come to terms with her feelings about Dex and Darcy.

Movies like this aren't really about their storylines, which tend not to hold up to much examination.  They work (or don't) based on style and charm.  Here, Luke Greenfield (he directed The Girl Next Door, the picture that featured Elisha Cuthbert as a porn star but was mostly notable for Timothy Olyphant's turn as the villain) handles the cast well and keeps the train moving.  Goodwin is an enormously appealing actress, who as viewers of "Big Love" know is capable of much more than the wet-eyed, adoring glances and anxious tics asked of her here; after this and He's Just Not That Into You, she needs to diversify before she falls into Hudson's trap of becoming her own cliche.  Krasinski is the funniest person on screen, just as he was in It's Complicated; is there some Hollywood conspiracy keeping him from leading man roles?  Hudson, taken in small doses, is perfectly good as the monstrous Darcy.  (She and Goodwin have a late-night dance bit that makes you wish the movie would spin off its rom-com axis and take some risks.)  Egglesfield is somewhat a block of wood as Dex, which isn't unusual for the love object in these movies, but makes the very conventional ending feel even more dull.  

The one thing that's slightly refreshing about Something Borrowed is that none of its characters behave well; even our heroine is trying to steal her best friend's fiancee, however she may rationalize it.  There are even brief moments when the movie reaches for a taste of Woody Allen-ish emotional complexity... until it remembers its target audience.  In the end, it's just counter-programming, a little summery romance and laughter to balance the mighty hammer blows of Thor's opening weekend.  As the parade of 3D summer action spectacles commences, though, a Kate Hudson comedy that's bearable is a special effect that shouldn't be too lightly dismissed.

(SOMETHING BORROWED - Warner Bros - 110 minutes - PG 13 - Director:  Luke Greenfield -  Script:  Jennie Urman Snyder, based on the novel by Emily Giffin - Cast:  Ginnifer Goodwin, Kate Hudson, Colin Eggleston, John Krasinski, Steve Howey, Ashley Williams - Wide Release)