When How Do You Know came out in 2010, it was soundly thrashed by critics and audiences and bombed pretty heavily at the box office. Despite a love of the cast, I started watching How Do You Know with super low expectations, but found that it didn’t suck as epically as most of the reviews I read before pushing play.
Lisa (Reese Witherspoon) finds herself at a crossroads when, at 31 years old, she’s deemed too old to play for the national softball team and is cut from the roster. She’s been dating Matty (Owen Wilson), an immature but handsome professional baseball pitcher. However, since they’re not strictly committed to one another, she agrees to a date with George Madison (Paul Rudd), a recently dumped corporate businessman under investigation for stock fraud.
Lisa and George are both struggling with massive changes in their lives, but it’s clear that George is pretty smitten with Lisa by the time they part ways. But while George is dealing with his emotionally manipulative father, Charles (Jack Nicholson), and the possibility of being indicted and going to jail, Lisa is quickly becoming more serious with Matty, who impulsively asks her to move in with him.
How Do You Know is a highly formulaic rom-com; that much is true. I was a bit excited to see a female athlete as the main protagonist, but sadly, the movie spends only 5 to 10 minutes on Lisa’s actual career, and the rest of the film focuses on the love triangle she finds herself in with Matty and George.
On the one hand, I can understand Lisa’s desire to distract herself from the fact that she’s no longer doing what she loves and what she has devoted her entire life to. Still, on the other hand, I wish the movie hadn’t deviated so abruptly from the emotional fallout from losing her spot on a team she lived and breathed for.
Owen Wilson’s Matty is silly, juvenile, and a philanderer, and he doesn’t exactly go to great lengths to hide any of these particular traits. Wilson does a fine enough job as Matty, and it seems like he’s having fun with the role, but there’s nothing new about it. The character is one we’ve seen dozens of times in other rom-coms.
It’s one thing for Lisa to spend time with him because he’s fun, handsome, and ‘insensitive’ – which is something she claims she needs after being comforted by the entire softball team after the news that she was cut. But when she moves in with him and is repeatedly shown how little Matty actually cares about her, it’s baffling to me that a strong, confident woman like Lisa would keep giving him another chance after another to grow up.
As is generally the case, in my humble opinion, Paul Rudd is charming and funny enough to make even a lousy movie an okay movie. I’m pretty sure he is the only one who shares the screen with every character, and he adds plenty of awkward sweetness to George’s role, so of course you’ll root for him to avoid jail and win the girl.
Reese Witherspoon takes a somewhat flimsy role and adds depth and likability to Lisa. Reese has always had excellent comedic timing, but Lisa doesn’t get many opportunities to be funny. She is mainly at the mercy of Matty, the daffy caricature of a male athlete, and George, the affable everyman who makes her laugh with his bumbling honesty.
Given the caliber of the cast, I was hoping for more from How Do You Know. The script was disappointing, and the characters, while enjoyable enough, were characters I’ve seen before. How Do You Know offers nothing new to the rom-com genre, and the movie itself felt a bit clunky, as if it couldn’t quite figure out what kind of story it wanted to tell. Do I think the film was as bad as the reviews claimed when it was released? Not really, no. But it wasn’t anything overly memorable, either. It was okay… but that’s about it.
Watched: 01/26/2019
Notable Song: Turn Off The Lights by Teddy Pendergrass
