How Do You Know

Kamurai

22 Jul 2020 · via TMDb

4.0

Boring watch, won't watch again, and can't recommend. Paul Rudd (especially) and Jack Nicholson are actors I would use as a barometer for movie quality, and even Reese Witherspoon (even though I'm not a big fan) usually is in quality movies, but this is just such a dud. It's the rom com equivalent to watching paint dry. Everything about it draws enormous attention to what you would expect to be happening and not doing it. Trust me, I understand that subversion of expectation is comedy, but there is a rate of diminishing returns on the repetition and duration of the joke, and if you play with that line, then you're writing a comedy for comedy writers because they are the only ones that are going to look at the movie / life as a punchline, and I don't think that is what they were going for. There is an underlying theme of patience and adaptability: life will even out even in the roughest of situations, but the movie just sort of stops without even an epilogue, they're just literally and suddenly not there anymore. I think there is a lot to get out of the movie, if you're strong enough to reach for it: a man who has everything but doesn't give you what you need isn't as good a man who has almost nothing and wants to give you what you need. It's a counter argument to "Nice guys finish last". Please don't waste your time, go watch anything else Paul Rudd has been in except for the one where he buys a French villa.