The romantic comedy genre should take some notes.
The long-awaited, much-promoted A Wrinkle in Time from acclaimed director Ava DuVernay has opened to mixed reviews and a response which says that fans of the book, filmmaker, and stars (including Oprah Winfrey, Reese Witherspoon, and Mindy Kaling) might be over it already…or maybe not.
Regardless, A Wrinkle in Time is the kind of imaginative, large scale spectacle which utilizes its “spared no expense” $100 million budget fairly well. It’s certainly been the largest-budgeted production to bear Witherspoon’s name in quite a while. The last time the Oscar-winner found herself starring in a movie with such a hefty price tag, it wasn’t for some effects-driven extravaganza, but actually a romantic comedy. Although James L. Brooks’s 2010 comedy How Do You Know certainly didn’t warrant such a budget, its strengths and joys as an enriching movie experience are definitely there.
In How Do You Know, star softball player Lisa (Witherspoon) has found herself forced into early retirement and suddenly single after being unable to deal with the man-child tendencies of her boyfriend Manny (Owen Wilson). On the other side of town, successful businessman George (Paul Rudd), one of Lisa’s former blind dates, has just received word from his father Charles (Jack Nicholson) that the former has just become the subject of a federal investigation regarding the family company. When George and Lisa meet in an elevator during these decidedly bumpy times in their lives, sparks unexpectedly fly.
How Do You Know is a comedy, and it never forgets that fact through plenty of humorous moments like Matty’s inept apologizing to Lisa over the phone and George and Lisa’s horrendous blind date. Yet the crucial ingredient in all of Brooks’s efforts is the fact that he tends to create characters rather than composites. While most comedies feature people with a collection of focus group-driven characteristics in an effort to identify with as many demographics as possible, Brooks has always been more concerned with bringing to the surface the various intricacies and flaws which makes us human. It’s because of this that all of the characters within How Do You Know feel real and fleshed out. Everyone in the movie is struggling with something, from where exactly George went wrong with his company to Matty’s misguided efforts to keep Lisa in love with him to Lisa essentially having to find a new identity for herself. Each character exists as more than just a function in How Do You Know, with no one coming off as peripheral by any means. This is especially true in the relationship between Charles and George as the film takes time away from the romantic triangle to explore a somewhat complex adult parent/child dynamic.
At the heart of How Do You Know are the questions it has its characters ask themselves. Seeing Lisa wonder if she has what it takes to have the kind of future most women her age easily fall into, as Matty questions why he is continuously failing to do right by the woman he truly wants in his life, expertly moves the film along. At the same time, George struggling to see if he even has the strength to even try for something hopeful after being torn apart by life ,as Charles wrestles with making perhaps the biggest sacrifice of his life to date, beautifully shows that Brooks’s ability to take his stories and characters into the sort of deep terrain not typically found in comedies. High quality writing accompanies the characters as they wrestle their issues, with plenty cinematic wisdom present throughout the film. “We are all just one small adjustment away from making our lives work,” George says at one point in the midst of a crisis which might send him to prison. “When you’re in something, you got to give it everything you have or else what are you doing?” Lisa asks as she, in a way, addresses all of the characters’ plights. As is the case with all of his movies, How Do You Know is Brooks examining the hunger for answers to the aspects of life we are endlessly trying to figure out.
The thing about a James L. Brooks film is how the strength of his writing has an uncanny ability to utilize the various strengths of a cast in a way that never makes them come off as tiresome. It’s because of this that Rudd’s goofiness, Witherspoon’s pluckiness, and Wilson’s cluelessness all feel authentic amongst the screenplay’s honesty, allowing the actors to do some great work. While the trio play to their screen personas in refreshing ways, it’s Nicholson who, as Charles, is the one actor in the cast who truly goes against type by playing a flawed man faced with a decision which recalls an unpleasant past and determines a grave future. It also bears mentioning that Kathryn Hahn shines in a supporting role as George’s heavily pregnant secretary. The actress fits in so perfectly in Brooks’s world, delivering his words with the same kind of fiery potency that Valerie Harper and Julie Kavner did back in his ‘70s television shows.
Critics, audiences, and doubtless the filmmakers themselves were all hoping How Do You Know would repeat the success of As Good as it Gets, Brooks and Nicholson’s previous successful collaboration, which had garnered glowing reviews, box-office returns, and Oscar glory. Sadly, lightning failed to strike again, and How Do You Know received decidedly lukewarm reviews while being ignored by the public in favor of edgier December releases such as Black Swan and Tron: Legacy.
One of the reasons cited by the press for the film’s lack of returns was the film’s aforementioned budget. With a reported $50 million going to director and cast salaries, Brooks’s extensive filming practices, and a decision to reshoot both the film’s intro and ending, How Do You Know has gone on to become one of the biggest box-office bombs of all time. The movie’s failure has had far greater effects than just a financial loss. For one, Nicholson has not acted since, and the tradition of the grand-scale, all-star comedy that How Do You Know embodied has started to become a thing of the past. Like Nicholson, Brooks has yet to make another film. With the failure of both this and his previous effort (2004’s equally endearing Spanglish), the era of a certain kind of Hollywood movie which aimed for both natural laughs and thoughtfulness as it dared to genuinely talk about the characters on the screen seemed to diminish. Yet the strength of a filmmaker like Brooks, with a love of both laughter and the mechanics of humanity, is the ability to have his work transcend any era.
