Julie (Jennifer Westfeldt) and Jason (Adam Scott) are best friends. Their small circle of friends is two other couples, Leslie and Alex (Maya Rudolph and Chris O'Dowd) who are happy to slip into parenthood and early middle age, and Ben and Missy (John Hamm and Kristen Wiig) who are at it like rabbits and less happy about parenthood, but still embrace it. As time goes on both Julie and Jason realise they want children, but neither wants the time constraints of finding a partner (and Jason enjoys being fairly promiscuous) so, based on the strength of their friendship, they decide to have a child together despite not fancying each other, and then co-parent. This plan turns out to work fairly well to the amazement of their friends. But the path of romcoms never run smooth...
Jennifer Westfeldt (a lady who I had never heard of) writes, directs, and stars, together with a batch of people who were in Bridesmaids. This film is not Bridesmaids, but it does try quite hard. I didn't like most of what made the young female members of the audience laugh (the sexually explicit crude humour), I didn't like the bad language (much of which was, as usual, entirely unnecessary, and I particularly didn't like the film's payoff line about effing the ess out of me) but I liked much of the more gentle humour about relationships and the impact of children.
Moving on from preferences, I think a broader weakness is that the two main characters remain fairly unsympathetic for much of the movie, although I warmed to them by the end. On the other hand, there is a terrific dark and humourless scene at the two-thirds mark involving Hamm and Scott in particular, but with excellent and understated contributions from Wiig and Megan Fox.
By the time this film made its way to its predictable and unlikely conclusion, it had pleased me more than it had irritated me, but only by a small margin.
Jennifer Westfeldt (a lady who I had never heard of) writes, directs, and stars, together with a batch of people who were in Bridesmaids. This film is not Bridesmaids, but it does try quite hard. I didn't like most of what made the young female members of the audience laugh (the sexually explicit crude humour), I didn't like the bad language (much of which was, as usual, entirely unnecessary, and I particularly didn't like the film's payoff line about effing the ess out of me) but I liked much of the more gentle humour about relationships and the impact of children.
Moving on from preferences, I think a broader weakness is that the two main characters remain fairly unsympathetic for much of the movie, although I warmed to them by the end. On the other hand, there is a terrific dark and humourless scene at the two-thirds mark involving Hamm and Scott in particular, but with excellent and understated contributions from Wiig and Megan Fox.
By the time this film made its way to its predictable and unlikely conclusion, it had pleased me more than it had irritated me, but only by a small margin.