Movie Review: Something Borrowed

I’ll start this review with a confession. While I’m no avid chick-lit reader, I am a huge Emily Giffin fan, and I have been ever since I picked up the pretty pink copy of Something Borrowed in an airport bookstore six years ago. What makes Ms. Giffin’s novels stand out from the rest of her genre is the fact that she explores the shades of gray that are often ignored in stories of sassy heroines both in print and in schmaltzy romantic comedies. Something Borrowed argues that just because you are having an affair with your best friend’s fiancée doesn’t mean that you are a horrible human being. And just because he’s exploring all of his latent feelings for you doesn’t mean he is a terrible person either. But whether or not acting on the feelings is right or wrong, all actions have consequences and sacrifices must be made to achieve happiness.

The movie Something Borrowed opens with Rachel White (Ginnifer Goodwin) walking into her “surprise” 30^th birthday party thrown by her best friend since childhood, Darcy Rhone (Kate Hudson). In typical cliché fashion, Rachel is the smart “frumpy” one (we’ll come back to this) who has always been in attention-stealing Darcy’s shadow. You can’t help but notice this dynamic, and screenwriter Jennie Snyder Urman does an admirable job of quickly providing the back story between the main characters. While Rachel casually enjoys the evening, Darcy proceeds to get sloppy drunk, and her fiancée Dex Thaler (Colin Egglesfield) takes her home early. But as Rachel is leaving a short time later, Dex returns to fetch the purse Darcy inadvertently left behind. Instead of getting the purse and immediately returning home, he and Rachel decide to go to another bar for a few drinks. Soon they are making out in the back of a taxi.

Cut to them waking up together in Rachel’s bed the next morning. *Gasp* You can’t have CHEATING in a romantic comedy. For shame!

So ensues the classic “which one will he choose” story: Will the gorgeous – and Egglesfield is absolutely, breathtakingly gorgeous – intelligent man choose the cute, down-to-earth lawyer or the shallow, life-of-the-party blonde? It’s a stupid question. OF COURSE he should choose the lawyer. Wait, there is a whole movie devoted to this? Yes, but behind the rom com façade, the will he, won’t he part of the story isn’t really the point. What drives the movie is the question of whether it is ok to throw your friend under a bus because she’s a selfish bitch and because you’ve always been in love with the guy she’s going to marry.

The casting of Goodwin as the “frumpy” Rachel is somewhat confusing as the description just doesn’t fit her. Goodwin is tall and slender with big green eyes, long legs, and a pixie face. During the frequent flashbacks, she’s shown with a bit of frizzy hair, but a bit of frizz does not a frump make. It’s an instance of Hollywood putting glasses on a girl and pulling her hair back to make her “ugly,” only to take the glasses off and give her a blowout and, Oh My God, she’s GORGEOUS. From the first scene in the film, the audience can see that Rachel is gorgeous, but the movie tries to make us believe that she’s plain. It’s really quite awkward. Of course, finding a truly chubby, plain but sweet leading lady in Hollywood may be a difficult task. Regardless, now the gorgeous leading man has to choose between beautiful and intelligent and beautiful and shallow. Hmmm. Really?

But beyond the incongruous casting, my real problem with the movie stems directly from the fact that it was adapted from a novel. As with many adaptations (think Memoirs of a Geisha), the movie doesn’t have time to fully develop the relationship between Rachel and Dex. It doesn’t allow the audience to experience the growing depth and confusion of their feelings; instead it sort of has to skip over building emotion to get on with the story. Even their first kiss seems forced and rushed, and throughout the movie, they fail to elicit any emotion from the audience. So the performance of Goodwin and Egglesfield when together just falls flat.

As a fan of the novel, I was also disappointed in the addition of Dex’s parents to the plot. Instead of just letting Dex be torn between the woman he’s been with for seven years and the woman he SHOULD have been with for those seven years, they throw in some expectation guilt in an effort to make him appear less culpable for his delay in ending the engagement. I guess that makes him a better romantic hero to some, but I think it detracts from the spirit of the novel. Can’t an audience understand that even if you aren’t right together, it’s just plain HARD to end a relationship after that long? Why do rich parents need to be thrown into the mix?

Despite the missteps, there were several parts of the film that really worked and those are the parts that will have me watching this movie again. Kate Hudson plays a perfect ditzy, selfish, fashion-plate Darcy Rhone. The obligatory male best friend Ethan (John Krasinski), who plays only a minor part in the original novel, is ideally suited to Krasinski’s boy next door charm. As the previews suggest, Krasinski creates most of the comedy in the movie, along with the predatory, crazy girl character, Clare (Ashley Williams). Despite the over the top nature of Clare’s character, you really can’t help but laugh.

So yes, because I love the book (and its sequel), I really wanted to love this movie. And I did genuinely like parts of it. But I liked it more for the performances and comedy provided by the supporting characters and not because of Rachel and Dex. I think that’s sad, but I also understand that there is only so much you can do in that magic 100-minute timeframe. So if the movie is going to be funny and get through the story, some pieces of the book are just going to have to go. It’s just too bad it was the emotional connection between the two main characters that got sacrificed.