Friends with Kids (2012)

Waste of Money.

Really Surprised!

A Disappointing Continuation

It's not great by any means, but it's a pretty good movie that didn't leave me filled with regret for investing time in it.

"Friends With Kids" is a typical rom-com/chick flick for the modern age. It features a modern twist on a relationship: two people who only love each other as friends decide to have a kid between them after seeing what the standard marriage-and-children debacle has done to their friends.The casting of dependable comic actors like Chris O'Dowd and Kristen Wiig makes you anticipate at least some sort of ensemble of memorable characters, or even memorable scenes with these actors, but the movie delivers none. They just fight constantly to make it abundantly clear why the main characters take a different route. It feels like a rip-off that you're stuck with Adam Scott and Jennifer Westfeldt in a movie with O'Dowd and Wiig.Adam Scott is a good actor, but I wasn't sure how to take his turn as a serial womanizer who ends up with the surgically enhanced Megan Fox on his arm. He has a certain smarmy charm, but is he a ladykiller?And Westfeldt? Well, if you haven't heard of her (I hadn't) I don't think that's likely to change any time soon.The movie could have at least been an example of a filmic version of an alternative relationship, but then the ending bottles it in the most clichéd possible way. If you read the first paragraph of this review, you already guessed how it ends.Move along, nothing to see here.

I just want to watch it over and over. Just a perfect movie. It really hit home for me for some reason. I'm a writer myself and women never get the credit they deserve. It is completely relatable. Been there in the dating seen. Blind date situations, getting older and the young "hot chick" pains, the first years of marriage stage and the true feelings of looking at your friends thinking...What are you doing? After having kids. Jennifer put this entire Bridesmaids cast together before Bridesmaids and she gets no credit. She's an amazing actor, writer and director! This chick knows how to write, how to act, she knows how to put an amazing cast together and hire the editors etc. I'm blown away and I don't know these people at all. All I can say is....Go girl, Go!

Two plutonic friends decide to have a baby but not marry, to avoid the toll kids may have on their marriage. The characters seem uninspired and personal interaction seemed stale. Passionless. The humor wasn't there for me. I kept waiting for the punch line, even the actors seemed stiff and bored. Jennifer Westfeldt, the films writer ,director, and actor made this slow mover hard to really get into, with predictable scenes and ending. Kristin Wiig's character maybe could have added some humor had the character hadn't been hidden in the background. Although slow moving this was entertaining I just kept waiting for the pace to speed up.

Pros: -This movie is very well shot, directed, and filmed. -The characters are real and engaging. -GREAT supporting cast. -The premise is dumb and common, and from the first scene you know exactly what kind of movie this is and where it is going, but the script itself is pretty damn fine, and keeps things intelligent and lively.Cons:-There's not much to Julie other than her character sketch. When she could show some personality and engage with the audience, she disintegrates into Ally McBeal-esque stuttering. Of course we want Jason to like her, but whereas we see a lot of who Jason is as a person, with Julie we have to take a lot of things on faith. When Jason has his first little Jerry Maguire speech at the ski lodge and talks about how they have similar taste and ideas about everything, I wasn't convinced that Julie hadn't just led him to believe that in the way people will chameleon for the person they're interested in, because all I knew about Julie even by that point was that she was young and successful and had nice hair.-2 or 3 different Jerry Maguire-esque speeches.-Adam Scott isn't really believable as the super-lothario he's supposed to be. -The premise itself is insipid. -The "Boy-loses-girl" moment is so huge that there's no believable possibility of recovery.-Awkward insertions of atheism, which are distracting.