‘Life’ gets complicated when a baby is involved
The orphaned child who is thrust upon an unsuspecting relative
or friend in order to change their lives for the better is a
concept that has been done plenty of times before in movies. It is
done again, with a twist, in
”
Life As We Know it,
”
starring Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel.
‘Life’ gets complicated when a baby is involved
The orphaned child who is thrust upon an unsuspecting relative or friend in order to change their lives for the better is a concept that has been done plenty of times before in movies. It is done again, with a twist, in “Life As We Know it,” starring Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel.
Unlike “Raising Helen,” where the party girl younger sister is given custody of three children after a fatal car accident or “Baby Boom,” where a career woman inherits a baby from a distant relative, two people are selected to raise baby Sophie (played by triplets Alexis, Brynn and Brooke Clagett.) When her parents die in an unlikely accident, Holly (Heigl) and Eric (Josh Duhamel), who goes by his last name Messer are named co-guardians of the 1-year-old girl. The big problem is that the two are not a couple. They had one blind date three years before that didn’t even get out of the driveway and since then they have been at odds with each other.
Messer is a technical director on the camera crew for a professional basketball team and a ladies man. He is always late and never plans for anything. Holly is the opposite. She owns her own business, a bakery/sandwich shop and she has aspirations to expand it into a restaurant. Holly has been focused on her career and hasn’t dated much. In fact, she was just calling a handsome doctor she met at her shop when she got the call about her friends.
Everything gets put on hold when Holly and Messer find out that their mutual best friends picked them to raise their daughter. As with other movies that use the orphan child as a vehicle to make the main characters grow, some suspension of disbelief is required. Though Sophie’s parents seemed to be in their early 30s, Sophie has only one living grandparent who requires an oxygen tank to breathe. The couple had no siblings or other close relatives. The only family who shows up at the funeral is distant cousins who have nine kids and another who is a dancer who is on tour.
Holly and Messer decide to take on the challenge and move into Peter and Alison’s home, as the will requested. The will leaves them enough to cover the mortgage on the home, but they have to cover household expenses and upkeep on the home.
The pair struggles at first, just as any new parents would. Sophie doesn’t want to eat anything. She cries a lot. They are sleep-deprived and tired of listening to the Wiggles. They have a wall calendar to keep track of their work schedules and Sophie’s needs.
Holly and Messer are still clashing with each other, but things seem to be going all right until something is wrong with Sophie’s belly button. Holly takes her to see a pediatrician, who turns out to be the handsome doctor Sam (Josh Lucas) who she met in the shop. She has a mini-breakdown in his office. He tells her to make sure she takes a break for herself and suggests she have a couple glasses of wine.
Things get complicated a little bit more when a social worker from Child Protective Services shows up, after Holly has had a few glasses of wine. Messer, who is usually the irresponsible one, takes charge. He stalls the social worker while Holly takes a shower and tries to sober up a bit. It doesn’t really work, of course, and leads to some laughs.
The main obstacles in the movie are predictable. Both of the main characters struggle with balancing their obligation to Sophie with desires to advance in their careers. They also have to deal with the social worker popping in two more times, which is sure to happen at inopportune times. And then of course there is the growing affection between Messer and Holly.
The movie is a little slow moving, as writers Ian Deitchman and Kristin Rusk Robinson had to include the prelude of how Messer and Holly first met, and establish their close relationships with Sophie’s parents as well as show that there were no logical family members who could raise Sophie. The set-up takes a while before viewers get to the real action of the film, which is about Messer and Holly raising the baby together.
Katherine Heigl, who is best known as Izzy on “Grey’s Anatomy,” though she has done several romantic comedies, still comes across as one note. I would blame the writers, by Josh Duhamel seemed to have no problem expressing his highs and lows as a single guy who is suddenly burdened with a baby. His Messer just seemed more complex than Heigl’s Holly. The movie is one of the better romantic comedies of the last few years, but in terms of the orphaned children genre, “Raising Helen” and “Baby Boom” definitely have more laughs to balance out the early tragedy in the films.
