Three Imaginary Girls

Seattle's Indie-Pop Press – Music Reviews, Film Reviews, and Big Fun

Something Borrowed

I’d like to tell you that Something Borrowed takes a gutsy stab at making something painfully unfunny, funny – but honestly, there’s just no way to spin “sleeping with your best friend’s fiance” into something hilarious, no matter how hard you try to pad it with stereotypes and OMG! LOL! moments.

This packed-with-cliches rom-com is dependent on many unbelievable things. The first of which is that best friend Darcy (Kate Hudson) is so smoking hot that no one would take a second look at Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin) – which is of course, incredibly ridiculous. Even if you stick Goodwin in plain clothes and bad hair, hi. She’s still GORGEOUS.

That doesn’ t really matter though, because Rachel is such a sad-sack doormat that she let Darcy steal the man of her dreams years earlier because “hot guys don’t go out with girls like me”. Uh. or something.

The film starts with Darcy throwing a 30th birthday party for Rachel, wherein we quickly realize that Darcy is completely despicable. Like, in a “why would ANYONE stay friends with that girl” kind of way – which I guess is why a few moments later when Rachel starts making out with Darcy’s chiseled GQ fiance Dex (Colin Egglesfield – seriously. Did this guy step right off a magazine cover?) , we’re supposed to be fine with it.

Except. Oh, hey. Filmmakers? Showing a girl sleeping with her best friend’s man – no matter what excuses there are – is really not funny. Like, at all.

The rest of the movie is a gut-wrenching, hard-to-watch series of events in which Rachel and Dex must conceal their long-dormant and now blossoming love, while Rachel suffers through listening to the intended bride and groom have sex, helping Darcy with wedding plans, and being hit on by a womanizing stoner douchebag as she waits for Dex to choose which girl he wants.

The only redeemable character in the whole film is Ethan (the ever-adorable John Krasinksi), who points out frequently that Darcy is a number one, grade-A bitch, and that Rachel has always deserved a better friend. Also, he’s got some genuinely funny lines. Too bad they had to mess even that up by providing him with an extra-cliched super desperate woman who won’t listen when he tries to tell her their one-night-stand didn’t mean anything other than drunken sex (thanks for including one of my biggest pet peeves, guys).

Oy, script writers! Was the novel this bad? I don’t think I want to read it to find out…

Based on the uproarious laughter at EVERYTHING by the preview audience I saw this with, it will undoubtedly be a big hit, but as the final frame rolled I felt icky for even having watched it. Look, I take many things with a grain of salt, and I try to be very liberal in my thinking…this is just not one of those things I’m willing to accept. Tip for the clueless: It is never okay to lie repeatedly to someone you’re calling your friend, let alone your “best” one – even if you’re wildly in love with the man they’re about to marry. And FYI: My Best Friend’s Wedding covered a simliar subject 1000x times better AND funnier. Rent that instead of going to see this.