How Do You Know DIRECTOR: James L. Brooks CAST: Reese Witherspoon,Owen Wilson, Paul Rudd,Jack Nicholson rating: * Three likeable stars and Jack Nicholson. Can you take this foursome and make a film that makes you want to barf the moment it opens? Yes,if the film is How Do You Know,which claims rom-com status and gives us nothing but regurgitated lines,and puke-worthy situations. Lisa (Witherspoon) doesnt make it to the softball team. So off she goes to find comfort in rich Mattys (Wilson) baseball-pitcher arms,which turns out,as we could have told her,to be an on-and-off thing. Because,see,Matty is the kind of guy who thinks all female jocks are great in bed,and hes even better,and whaddya know,you can find a jacket your size the morning after,because he believes in being ready and keeping all sizes of jumpers and jackets and toothbrushes handy in his palace-sized bathroom. So,of course,theres got to be the better bet hanging about. George (Rudd) is the clean-cut businessman whose lifes a mess: his girlfriend has dumped him because hes facing a prison term for the sins of his father (Nicholson),an outrageous,unashamed fraud. Yeah,thats the guy for our girl,and she will discover this,kaboom and kapow,after two hours of unmitigated tedium. These people speak to each other in dialogue that must have come out of an assembly line of scriptwriters under instruction to do funny,sentimental,teary. And Nicholson gets away with the worst ham act of his life. Whatever happened to James L. Brooks? This has to be As Bad As It Gets.
