Level-headed brunette Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin) and fun-loving blonde
Darcy (Kate Hudson) have been best friends since childhood. Now that
their 20s are coming to an end, the differences between their
personalities are striking, but with her wedding fast approaching, Darcy
has no doubt in her mind as to who she wants as her maid of honor. The
only trouble is that it was Rachel who introduced Darcy to her fiancé
Dex (Colin Egglesfield), who she secretly adored all through law school.
When the surprise 30th birthday party Darcy throws for her leaves
Rachel drunk and despondent, it leads to a quiet moment in which she
unthinkingly blurts out her long-repressed feelings and discovers that
they were mutual. Are mutual. Shenanigans ensue. Will Rachel
confess? Will Dex? Was this a horrible one-time mistake, or was the
bigger mistake Dex’s proposal to Darcy?
This movie, directed by
Luke Greenfield and with a screenplay by Jennie Snyder based on the
novel by Emily Giffin, is a PG-13 rated romantic comedy, and it’s really
less of a comedy than it at first appears. There’s some unsavory
language to wade through, but the bigger reason for the rating is the
steamy stuff that, while rarely shown, frequently seeps into the
dialogue and is a big part of the storyline. The film unfolds in such a
way that the audience’s sympathies are likely to be divided. On the one
hand, Dex and Rachel’s untimely shedding of their inhibitions makes us
inclined to see them in an unfavorable light, with one betraying his
fiancée and the other her best friend. On the other hand, Rachel and Dex
have a deeper relationship that stretches further back. They have far
more in common, and Dex’s face lights up whenever he sees Rachel. Thus,
one can’t help rooting for these two to get together, to finally
course-correct from the unfortunate directions their lives took as a
result of their toxic timidity.
I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen
Egglesfield in anything before, but he thoroughly captured my attention
here. In Darcy’s presence, Dex is polite but almost unfailingly
uncomfortable, while he seems at blissful ease with Rachel. One wonders
why he ever wanted to marry Darcy, since they seem so totally
mismatched. It seems to be a combination of sheer physical attraction
and Darcy’s forceful personality overpowering his reserved one, though I
think Goodwin actually looks a lot prettier in this movie than Hudson
does. Her quiet performance grabbed me as much as Egglesfield’s,
particularly the sparkle in her eyes in the flashbacks to grad school,
before everything got so complicated.
While I found both Rachel
and Dex more innately likable, I may have been most impressed with
Hudson’s performance because it’s so hard to know what to make of her
character. In some ways, she’s really quite obnoxious. She’s frequently
drunk, and she has a tendency to behave in outrageous, embarrassing
ways. However, whatever else she is, Darcy appears to be a genuinely
loyal friend who would never dream that Dex and Rachel could be going
behind her back with each other. Hudson emphasizes just enough of her
sweetness and vulnerability that we’re not allowed to forget what a
crummy thing those two did.
That isn’t to say that, once those
feelings came to light, I think they should have been immediately
ignored and the wedding should have proceeded as planned. “You can’t
marry someone when you’re in love with someone else,” Captain Von Trapp
declared in The Sound of Music.
So what did he do? He broke off his engagement and proposed to the
right woman. Here it’s just give in to passion first, think later, and
above all, avoid owning up to any wrongdoing at all costs, including
your own happiness.
While I hadn’t heard anything about this movie before my friend brought it over last night, she mentioned that The Office’s
John Krasinski has been receiving accolades for his role as Ethan, a
mutual childhood friend of Darcy and Rachel. While he has shortcomings
of his own, particularly when it comes to how he deals with Claire
(Ashley Williams), a woman with whom he had a fling but in whom he has
no lingering interest, Ethan serves as confidante and counselor to
Rachel, and it’s through him that we get the strongest sense of what
makes this woman tick. Meanwhile, Steve Howey reminds me of Ashton
Kutcher in his role as the libidinous, borderline repulsive oddball
Marcus.
It took me a little while to warm to the movie, but once
I did, I really found myself drawn in. Frustratingly, romantic comedies
that restrict themselves to lip-locks are increasingly rare these days,
and this certainly is no exception to the rule, though even if the main
characters were as chaste as the Jonas Brothers, it would only slightly
lessen the driving conflict. What makes the movie intriguing is the
fact that our protagonists are two people who should have gotten
together in the first place and whose failure to communicate has turned a
beautiful relationship into something shameful. We want them to get
together in the end, but we don’t really want them to get off scot-free
either. And where does this all leave Darcy, let alone her long-standing
friendship with Rachel, which she claims to cherish even more than her
relationship with Dex? How, too, does Ethan fit in?
By the end
of the movie, what really struck me about it was that it felt more
realistic than a lot of movies in this genre. All of the main characters
have likable characteristics, and all of them do despicable things,
sometimes in the name of friendship. A desire to avoid hurting another’s
feelings degenerates into more reasons for that person’s feelings to be
hurt. From its chaotic beginning to its untidy ending, Something Borrowed aptly demonstrates the problems that can arise when clear communication and courage are absent, in friendship and love alike.
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