The Dilemma

This movie should have worked.  I’m not saying The Dilemma should have won Oscars.  There was no expectation of an absurdly high meta critic score or massive box office success.  This would be no huge monkey maker for the studio.  All that being said, going in, it had some things working for it.  Vince Vaughn plays that guy Vince Vaughn plays very well, and the trailers quite clearly show he’s basically playing himself.  Kevin James is a good if not great comedic actor.  Jennifer Connelly and Winona Ryder have proven themselves to be immensely talented actresses, and here they were playing the significant others of our movies leading men.  Oh, and somebody named RON HOWARD was directing.  He did a few little movies like Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind, The Da Vinci Code, and Frost/Nixon.  So while I wasn’t expecting a ground breaking movie experience I was expecting one thing.  I expected that a comedy with this much talent would make me laugh.  Sadly, that was not the case.  I know in every movie review I put up here I always say “the less you know about the plot the better”, but forget that this time.  I’m going to spoiler the hell out of this movie, because it doesn’t matter.  So if, for some reason, you want to avoid spoilers, stop reading now.  Keep reading, and wonder with me why what should have been a decent comedy became an unfunny almost drama with characters who don’t even come close to acting like normal people would in their given situation.