Life as We Know It

In the business-as-usually-awful romantic comedy Life as We Know It, Katherine Heigl plays Holly, a dithering control freak of a single career girl (you’re shocked, right?) unprepared to take care of an infant unexpectedly left in her care. We know this because Holly shrieks at the smell of a dirty diaper, collapses under the challenge of removing said undergarment by pulling two pieces of tape, and greets neighbors unaware of the insouciant streak of baby poo on her face. There’s something about Holly: She’s the most ridiculous, irritating, two-dimensional rom-com heroine since…Katherine Heigl’s last rom-com.

Fulfilling, I can only assume, Hollywood career-building homework assigned by his agent, Josh Duhamel (Transformers) plays last-name-only Messer, the caveman hero so wrong for Holly that he’s bound to end up sweetly wiping the poo from her cheek. For his part, Messer demonstrates his unsuitability for parenthood by dropping the baby out of her carrier and parking her with a taxi driver when he can’t find a sitter. Holly and Messer have rom-com love-hated each other ever since a rom-com bad blind date years ago. But they’re raising this kid together because of a wee bit of plot-pushing tragedy: The parents, who are allegedly Holly and Messer’s best friends, die (neatly and casually) in a car accident. (Pity. Mom is played by Mad Men‘s Christina Hendricks.)

Have there ever, in the history of reality, existed parents who fail to discuss the responsibilities of legal guardianship with those designated as legal guardians? Well, there are in the tedious unreality of this witless, unfunny, unromantic product, a comedy as disposable — and stinky — as loaded Pampers. D-

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