Friends With Kids Movie Review

I saw a trailer for the upcoming comedy What to Expect When You’re Expecting, based on the best-selling book of the same name. Judging from the two minute trailer, it looks like yet another lowest common denominator comedy that gets the majority of its laughs from trafficking in stereotypes of the difficulties of parenting. In 2012 can Hollywood really do no better than jokes about incompetent dads who just don’t know what they’re doing? Seriously? This trailer came at the front of Jennifer Westfeldt’s startlingly excellent comedy Friends With Kids. The trailer for What to Expect doesn’t belong anywhere near the same screen as Westfeldt’s film.

The Town Movie Review: Ben Affleck's Second Film as Director Shows He's Not a One-Hit Wonder

Film noir of the 1940s and 50s, with its dark subject matter, antihero protagonists, chiaroscuro lighting and often down endings, is largely regarded as an offshoot of the place of the American psyche following the harrowing years of WWII. Likewise, the resurgence of the genre, dubbed neo-noir in the 1970s (including films like Chinatown and The Long Goodbye), reflected the public’s attitude toward the downward spiral of the American empire in the wake of Watergate and Vietnam.

So one might think that today’s political climate – two wars with no end in sight, one of them started on dubious evidence, a financial crisis the likes of which no one has seen in more than 70 years – would foster a another slew of noir films. And it has – in a way. In recent years, novelists and film makers have veered toward noir subject matter, but this neo neo-noir doesn’t look a whole lot like the genuine article. This new version tends to come with happy endings and a lighter touch. Will audiences simply not accept the unhappy ending these days in spite of the great challenges we face?

Shrek Forever After Movie Review: A Dying Franchise Gets a Final Reprieve

Puss let himself go a little bit

What is it about the shift from bachelorhood to family man that makes men suddenly wake up one day and wonder how they got themselves into a lifestyle that is the complete opposite to what they imagined as young men? Mid-life crises are often exploited for dramatic purposes and there are more than enough real-life examples of men who leave their wives for a younger woman or just an exciting fling. There must be something hard-wired in men that causes them to seemingly leap from the single life to married-with-children with little to no consideration for the intervening years.