Film Review: ‘Something Borrowed’ is something awful!

When it comes to romantic comedies, I’m very skeptical and weary of them. For the most part, I don’t like them. Many of them are these contrived, clichéd silly stories about unrealistic women finding love. For Something Borrowed, I decided to put away all my prejudices and go see it with an open mind. My expectations were still low, and the movie still managed to disappoint me.

Based off Emily Giffin’s novel, Something Borrowed is about Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin) and her best friend, Darcy (Kate Hudson). Darcy is about to get married tp Dex (Colin Egglesfield). But here’s the conflict! Rachel has always been in love with him. Secretly, Dex always had a thing for Rachel.  Wracked by guilt for their feelings for each other, they try to find a way to be together without hurting Darcy.

I’ll flat out say it and say this movie was pretty terrible. One major problem was the characters. Hudson’s character was insufferable. She wasn’t likeable AT ALL. She’s an obnoxious, self-absorbed party girl, who is a little passed her due date. Not one redeeming quality is shown from her in this film. So how would someone like Rachel, who’s supposedly smart and sensible, stay friends with someone like that? All Darcy does is slightly demean everyone around her and expect  them to bend at her will. How can I respect someone, like Rachel, who lets people do that to her? Besides Rachel’s evident lack of self-respect, Dex is just clueless, indecisive and scared. Yeah, he’s very good looking, but honestly that doesn’t mean much to me. He can’t make up his mind if he wants to break the engagement or stay with Darcy. So he keeps dragging Rachel along, and since obviously the girl has no self-respect, she lets him. This is pretty much happening throughout 80% of the movie.

There are two other supporting characters, that are mainly there for comic relief, and they’re not even funny. The one character I liked was Ethan, played by John Krasinski. Ethan was sincere, sensible and sarcastically funny. His scenes gave me a break from the unbearable. And there was a 2 minute scene, where I was like “WHOA!” and started thinking that this may actually have a good ending. But two minutes passed by, and all that hope was just shut down.

As with any rom-com, I will admit there were some cute scenes. I can think of only three; one included a cute flashback scene between Rachel and Dex. Another I mentioned above, and to save you from seeing the movie, you can watch one of those scenes here in an official clip. (Sorry, I’m always sucker for a dance routine.)

I do not recommend Something Borrowed. If you’ve watched romantic comedies before, it’s all the same thing. This movie offers you nothing new. I will admit that when the movie ended, all the women around gushed about how good and cute they thought the movie was. It’s sort of frustrating how anyone can be entertained by such contrived characters. Maybe I’m being pretentious, but I don’t think I am. As a young woman, who is a romantic (I’m not some bitter cynic that likes to rain on people’s parades. lol), I couldn’t enjoy much of this movie. It was all superficial, trite, and insincere. And I really hope you take my advice and don’t see it.

Something Borrowed will release in theaters Friday, May 6th.

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