My DVD player initially rejected this movie. I should have listened to it.
Zack Braff and Amanda Peet are a newly married couple about to have a baby when Zack loses his job. So they move home where he takes a job at her father's ad agency. That's when Zack meets Jason Bateman who attempts to make Zack's life hell so he can steal Amanda.
A fucking train wreck of a film. Boys and girls, if you've ever wanted to see what bad directing looks like, this is Exhibit A. There is no pacing to be found whatsoever. The plot skids along recklessly and completely out of control. The characters either have no purpose, are forgotten only to be introduced later, or don't act the way they are portrayed.
Examples:
-A character seen for 5 minutes in the opening is brought back into the film in the last 5 minutes like you were supposed to remember him.
-A female character, played by a lady from Mad TV (or SNL, I don't remember) serves no purpose whatsoever. Her character is as pointless as they come.
-A male character declares that he doesn't eat meat and won't appear in an ad campaign about eating meat, then two scenes later he's at a contract signing for that ad campaign. No explanation is ever given regarding his change of heart.
Those are just examples, but the whole story is filled with stuff like that.
Even worse, the humor is that "all these whacky things keep happening, but it's all just misunderstanding" stuff like in...I don't know...a movie where such things happen, so pretty much every romantic comedy ever. Only, these "whacky things" aren't happening to noone's knowledge, they're taking place right in front of the characters and they don't react to them properly. For example, the "asshole" (Jason Bateman) tries to hide his assholeness initially, but about half way through the film, he stops and is a blatant dick in front of everyone, yet they still think he's a good guy?! For example, he's alone with the newly married and just gave birth Amanda telling her about how he still has her panties from high school, but she still doesn't get that he wants her. Fucking ignorant.
To top it off everyone phones in their performances. And what's the deal with Charles Grodin? He aged about 1000 years over night. I had trouble figuring out it was him. I kept saying, "It sounds just like him, but looks nothing like him."
1 out of 10.