R. 1 hour, 40 minutes. At area theaters.
Ah, movie marketeers. What they lack in cleverness, they more than make up for by being opportunistic as all get out.
Take the trailer for the new relationship comedy “Friends With Kids,” written and directed by and starring Jennifer Westfeldt. (The Jill-of-all-trades came on the scene with the 2001 sleeper comedy “Kissing Jessica Stein,” which she co-wrote and starred in.)
In addition to the friends of the title (Westfeldt and Adam Scott of “Parks and Recreation” ), the movie’s frisky preview features four of the stars of “Bridesmaids”: Kristen Wiig, Maya Rudolph, Jon Hamm and Chris O’Dowd.
They’d like us to think laughter by association. Only “Friends” isn’t as riotous or as inventive, even though it swings on the unconventional (yet oddly familiar) notion of a guy and a gal playing with emotional fire.
Longtime best friends Julie and Jason want to have kids but neither’s found “the one,” yet. He’s a serial dater. She’s picky. So they go for it — together — although they’re not attracted to each other and plan on separate romantic lives.
Will Jason and Julie get all hot and bothered, singed, or both?
Megan Fox and Edward Burns arrive as actress Maryjane and divorced dad Kurt to provide fresh romantic challenges.
While the film’s publicity department boasts the film’s “Bridesmaid” bona fides, it’s the slim, dark-haired, boyish Scott who provides the film’s most nimble turn.
Sitcom-amusing, in that middle-of-the-road way, “Friends With Kids” is the 30-something follow-up to last year’s 20-something romantic comedies “Friends With Benefits” and the lesser “No Strings Attached.”
In all three, there’s a little hubris involved. Jason and Julie are certain they can do the parenting thing better, certainly no worse, than their married friends Leslie and Alex (Rudolph and O’Dowd) and Missy and Ben (Wiig and Hamm).
Like these married folk, we watch and await the potholes, the sorry timing, the tantrums.
Fissures start to show slowly but surely. The movie’s march toward the seemingly inevitable isn’t really the issue. Nor is Julie and Jason’s parenting. They love their son.
It’s more a matter of how many zigs and zags the pair will take on the way to figuring out with whom they belong.
Lisa Kennedy: 303-954-1567 or
