If Your Idea of a Good Time is Watching Cameron Diaz Make Faces At A Dog (Without the Use of a Mirror), Boy, Do I Have the Movie for You.

1.72 stars.
The unthinkable has occurred. And I'm warning you, the following sentence will never appear on my blog ever again:
Jude Law was the best thing in this movie.
Let it seep in for a second. Jude Law, who has no acting ability and absolutely RUINED All The King's Men, is legitimately better than any of his co-stars, including a 4-time Oscar nominee who's quite likely to garner a fifth nod in the coming weeks. How is this possible?
A LOT of things have to go wrong for Jude Law to emerge as a superior thespian. Number one, whomever was enlisted to cast this movie thought it would be a really good idea to sign Cameron Diaz on. Now, I realized after a few minutes that it had been an extremely long time since I'd seen her in a movie. I briefly shuffled through my mental snapshots and decided the last time I'd seen her in a theater was in 1998 for There's Something About Mary, and the last time I'd seen a movie she was in was 2001, when she had a supporting role in Vanilla Sky. I also realized that I'd never seen her in a movie that she was arguably headlining. It turns out there's a REALLY good reason for that. She's an incredibly, incredibly crappy actress, but you generally don't notice it because Cameron's usually in action movies, cartoons or movies where Ben Stiller is being embarassing. Who has time to notice that Cameron Diaz is clearly illiterate and probably has to have her lines recited to her? When you have someone who has NO business being in front of a camera sharing screen time with a mediocre actor, that actor is going to look amazing. If Jude Law was smart, he would make sure to star in Cameron Diaz movies all the time.

$10 says she receives text messages in Wing Ding font.

It also doesn't help that Kate Winslet voluntarily decided to be in a movie where her character has less depth than Walker, Texas Ranger. Since most of the movie centers on Cameron and Jude, we're mercifully spared for the most part from watching Kate Winslet cry over the creepy archduke guy from The Illusionist and then sucking face with Jack Black. (If anything good can be said about this movie, it's that the people who made it correctly assumed that NO ONE, and I mean NO ONE, wants to see Jack Black naked. As if we hadn't gotten our fill from being forced to gape at 40-foot Nacho Libre billboards on Broadway for 17 months.) Now, I don't want this to sound like an anti-Kate Winslet rant; it's really not. It's abundantly clear that she has infinitely more talent in her left nipple - which I think she has flagrantly displayed in at least 4 movies - than Cameron Diaz does in her entire, clearly aging body. Seriously. Jude Law looks about 10 years younger than her. But even the most talented actress in the entire universe, yes, even Natalie Portman, wouldn't have been able to do much with a mopey transplanted Brit wandering around LA and befriending geriatric former screenwriters walking across highways with walkers. I swear that actually happened.

Things you never bring with you on a stroll across Los Angeles County Freeway.

Even though nothing about this movie makes sense - seriously, would YOU switch houses for two weeks with a total stranger you met on a Website? - it DOES have some slightly sugary moments that weren't altogether nauseating. Most of them were, though. Jude Law has two little girls who are absolutely adorable and also has an amazing book collection that I intently studied while Cameron Diaz was in front of them making a dramatic speech for about five minutes. I spotted Hotel New Hampshire. My guess is that Cameron didn't.

The most awkward book about bears, incest and the hospitality industry EVER.

As Inna and I walked out of the theater (This was a free sneak preview, which is the ONLY way I would have seen it, even though I lost feeling in my down there place after 2 hours of waiting on line.), Inna quietly said, "Well, THAT was a wee bit retarded." That's pretty much dead-on. It wasn't mouthdroppingly retarded, but, in the immortal words of Kathy Griffin vis-a-vis Macy Gray, "[It] for sure had a little mental retardation. For sure. Just a little."

I'd rather you didn't.

I would also like to point out that before I went to see this saccharine-filled waste of space, I moseyed on over to Rare with Weenie and Michelle and had to deal with an Orwellian waitress. What does that mean? It involved a giant cuntsack leaning over to me literally every two minutes asking, "Are you sure you don't want any more fries?" "Yes, I'm sure." "But there are three of you." [Emma looks around] "Yes, yes there are." "So maybe you should get more fries." "Nah." "It would be really easy for me to go into the kitchen and get you more." "I believe you." "So do you want me to go you more?" "No." "You sure?"...ad infinitum. If Animal Farm was a waitress dot dot dot. That woman was lucky the bovine was perfection.


"But I don't WANT Emma to eat me!"