A straight turd from January of this year that I never actually saw until it showed up on HBO last week. So I killed two hours and held my nose to watch it.
What Works: Some of Vince Vaughn’s fantasy sequences as he’s lying really work. They snap the movie out of its formulaic rhythms for a few minutes…but only a few minutes.
What Doesn’t Work: The movie wastes Jennifer Connelly in the supporting role of Vince Vaughn’s girlfriend (it was depressing to watch her take such a role…the memories of Requiem for a Dream and A Beautiful Mind getting more distant by the day). It somewhat wastes Winona Ryder, Channing Tatum, Queen Latifah, and even Kevin James because it doesn’t really know what to do with them. And it completely wastes its juicy premise (Vaughn catches his best friend’s wife cheating on him and doesn’t know whether or not to reveal it to him) and spends all of five minutes having Vaughn conflicted about telling him. The rest is just a series of increasingly stupid and ridiculous interactions where you feel bad for Vaughn’s oafish character…bad that he’s the star of the movie instead of someone who gets killed off in the first five minutes.
What I Would Have Done Differently: Although there IS a decent setup at this movie’s center, it’s clear the filmmakers and star don’t know what to do with it. Instead of Vaughn’s braying jackass persona, I couldn’t help but think how much better Jason Bateman would have been in the same role. In conclusion, I would strip away all the extraneous fluff crowding out the movie’s center, spent real time on the central conflict instead of pretending to care about it, and cast Bateman instead. In other words, changed the movie entirely.