Life As We Know It Director: Greg Berlanti
Starring: Katherine Heigl, Josh Duhamel
**
Two rising stars meet in this romantic comedy. Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel play Holly and Eric, the friends of a couple who die in a car accident, leaving them as guardians to orphaned baby daughter Sophie. In the face of their long-standing mutual dislike, Holly and Eric are thrown together to try to raise Sophie, overcoming the trials and obstacles involved in raising children. Can they manage to survive parenthood, balance their busy lives with their new obligations, and survive each other in the process? A floppy script means however hard the pair try, Heigl and Duhamel cannot charm their way into the affections of the audience. We are dragged through formulaic scenes, montages and corny moments with the baby that feel pulled from a tacky commercial. Heigl continues to be dogged by one significant problem - she's simply very hard to like, and without a strong personality opposite her (see Gerard Butler in The Ugly Truth or Ashton Kutcher in Killers) she loses the viewer with the same "uptight" performance she has been wheeling out since Knocked Up. Duhamel is passable but not very memorable, and while there is some chemistry between them, it's wasted as the shambolic plot gives them nowhere to go. What could have been an enjoyable Three Men and a Baby-style comedy turns out to be a rather dull, typical studio non-effort.
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