Greetings again from the darkness. Seriously, I have nothing against cute movies with a message. What I can't stand are cute movies that aren't cute. Throw in a grating voice-over and cardboard characters and I am definitely OUT.
Somehow a film written and directed by the "American Splendor" team of Robert Pulcini and Shari Springer Berman, starring Scarlett Johansson, Laura Linney and Paul Giamatti comes across as shallow, poorly written and, at times, laughably unwatchable.
The stereotypes are flowing big time with rich, snobby, out of touch, self-absorbed "upper east siders" on display at every turn. Throw in the "Harvard Hottie" (played by the human torch, Chris Evans) who has the dead mom, boarding school childhood misery going for him, a few misplaced "Mary Poppins" tributes, and the brilliant but poor Anthropology major (Scarlett) who just wants to find herself working as a nanny, and you have the makings of a cheap Oxygen channel comdram. All parties should be embarrassed.
The only semi-bright spots are the icy rich mama played by the talented Linney ... when she flashes that smile or the stare, it does have some impact; and the power broker rich daddy played by the always excellent Giammatti - this time with a stuffy accent! Still the moments of hope are weak and all too infrequent.
Scarlett and Evans are quite the eye candy for the twenty something crowd, but no one involved could possibly feel good about the final product here. Such a waste.