This was one of those films that I never got round to seeing in the cinema as it looked like it could be good, but it could be terrible.

Unfortunately, the latter is more the case.

The story goes thus: young rich girl (Brittany Murphy) meets and falls in love with young poor boy (Ashton Kutcher). Her snobbish family don’t approve, but they go ahead and marry anyway. As soon as the wedding day’s over, things begin to go wrong. On honeymoon it only gets worse and when they return home they’re not even on speaking terms. But will true love prevail? Will they get back together? Oooooh, the tension! The excitement! The hilarity!!

Or… none of the above.

Okay, so innovative storyline is not exactly what romantic comedies are known for, but this one did have a lot of potential. (I don’t know if you’re getting fed up with reading it, but I’m getting bored of writing about films having potential that they fail to live up to…) Oh, and to add even more to the fun, thrills, spills, and excitement that isn’t there anyway, there’s a love rival. Oh yes, it really is that cliché…

I’ve been a fan of Murphy for a while now, but while it was nice to see her in a starring role, she’s much better than this (I still have to see her in Uptown Girls, which looks like it could be a lot better than this). I don’t much like Ashton Kutcher (though I still want to see The Butterfly Effect, where he plays a much different character), but I was prepared to not mind him being the co-star.

Sadly, the pair had no real chemistry (even when they were supposed to be madly in loved before falling out with each other). The whole focus of the humour was on stupidity and slapstick, which I could have managed to forgive if it had been funny. Murphy’s performance is almost ok and Kutcher is just plain annoying. The rest of the cast are little better, with little or no comic timing or emotion. On the other hand, with a script as poor as this, how good could they have been? The dialogue is atrocious, making absolutely no use of a potentially hilarious set of situations. Every opportunity to be crude, vulgar, idiotic is taken, and the effect is that this film is only just saved from the notorious 1-star rating by the skin of its teeth. There are some funny moments in the film. Far too few and far between, but they were there – so it wasn’t a complete disaster… quite.

This is a movie that obviously thinks its modern, hip, trendy, smart, sassy, and quite possibly making a relevant comment about upper-class snobbery. I’m afraid that it doesn’t. The interview with the two stars after the film (on the video version, anyway) was funnier than the film (though it was also very annoying)– and, in fact, the stars seemed to have a good deal more off-screen chemistry than on-screen, though both look and sound like grade-A morons in it… The deleted scenes are extremely lame, and the term “worthless filler material” springs immediately to mind.

I was hugely disappointed with Just Married… though I am very thankful that my own honeymoon was nothing like theirs!

CaptainD

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There are so many good romantic comedies out there to choose from… for some ideas click here.


Recommended:
No

Viewing Format: VHS
Video Occasion: None of the Above
Suitability For Children: Suitable for Children Age 13 and Older