THE DILEMMA (PG-13 for sexual content, some violence, profanity): This from top-drawer director Ron Howard? He's working with a muddled, over-long script from Allen Loeb, willing to permit Vince Vaughn enough rope in his improv scenes to hang both himself & Vaughn, taking the main plot off its track and into foreign territories that include yet another film that toys coyly - as does the film above - with buddy-buddy (are they or aren't they?) intimacy.
The basic plot idea is sprung in the first scene when it raises the question: How long does it take to really get to know somebody? Ronny (Vaughn) has been sleeping with Beth (Jennifer Connelly) long enough to feel he knows her well enough to tie the knot - but always hesitates. Meanwhile, his buddy Nick (Kevin James) is supposedly happily married to Geneva (Winona Ryder). But one day Ronny finds Geneva playing love games with Zip (Channing Tatum), and thus a dilemma is born: to tell his buddy or not to tell; to wait, hoping it's not a long lasting deal and if it is, what then?
Ronny confronts Geneva (with whom he's played love games in the past, secret like) and she blackmails him into silence by threatening to "out" him with his bride-to-be. Writer Loeb sets up the premise as a romantic farce, but it isn't long before things become dark, even ugly. That's when the jokes, if you want to think of them as such, are lame & sophomoric. And that's when Vaughn is permitted to improvise with clumsy lines of this sort: "Like anyone, the stuff that's easier for you, you kind of spend more time with and the stuff that's difficult you use what you're good at to avoid doing."
The basic plot idea is sprung in the first scene when it raises the question: How long does it take to really get to know somebody? Ronny (Vaughn) has been sleeping with Beth (Jennifer Connelly) long enough to feel he knows her well enough to tie the knot - but always hesitates. Meanwhile, his buddy Nick (Kevin James) is supposedly happily married to Geneva (Winona Ryder). But one day Ronny finds Geneva playing love games with Zip (Channing Tatum), and thus a dilemma is born: to tell his buddy or not to tell; to wait, hoping it's not a long lasting deal and if it is, what then?
Ronny confronts Geneva (with whom he's played love games in the past, secret like) and she blackmails him into silence by threatening to "out" him with his bride-to-be. Writer Loeb sets up the premise as a romantic farce, but it isn't long before things become dark, even ugly. That's when the jokes, if you want to think of them as such, are lame & sophomoric. And that's when Vaughn is permitted to improvise with clumsy lines of this sort: "Like anyone, the stuff that's easier for you, you kind of spend more time with and the stuff that's difficult you use what you're good at to avoid doing."
There's a prolonged scene of improv at a wedding with Vaughn extemporizing on what makes a marriage work: honesty. It's amazingly good improvisation, but it has little to do with the plot, just another example of a pro in action where it doesn't belong. (Howard, in an interview, extolled with admiration the actor's adlibbing talent, and permitted it to dominate one scene after another, slowing down the pace, as it zig-zags between farce & drama.)
Even Hans Zimmer's saturated music and Salvatore Totino's sometimes opulent cinematography, nor the appearance of Queen Latifa's sensuous (but embarrassingly meaningless) role as a Chrysler higher-up - (Oh, yeah, the two buddies are in business together, designing the perfect salable car) - aren't enough to hold this thing together. (Grade: C-)