MOVIE REVIEW: ‘Just Married’ is just dumb — Grade C+
I went to “Just Married” with every intention to hate it. The previews made it look like another slapstick, teen movie with shallow characters and a thin story tying the jokes together. I did find a lot to hate about this film, but I must admit that it was better than I thought it would be.
The film is about Tom (Ashton Kutcher) and Sarah (Brittany Murphy), two young people who fall in love, get married (even though her family hates him) and then go on the honeymoon from hell. This is compounded by the arrival of Sarah’s old love interest Peter Prentiss (Christian Kane) in Venice where they are staying.
The film was full of slapstick, wannabe humor — like falling through walls, getting hit with ashtrays, catching hotels on fire and any other situation the writers could think of getting Kutcher into.
The two actors were cute together, but Murphy played the same ditzy character she has played in almost every film she has made since “Clueless.”
I was slightly impressed with the brief glimpses of emotion visible in Kutcher’s performance. At times he actually let some depth and sincerity crop through the multitude of “Kelso” moments that filled the bulk of the film.
Inane clichés aside, “Just Married” did try to get across a decent message in this world of three-month Hollywood marriages. Tom’s father gives him advice after his disastrous honeymoon. He says marriage is not all happy moments, but it is the happy times that help you to get through the hard times.
Marriage is something that has to be worked at; it does not magically stay happily ever after all the time. And perhaps the best part of this moral is that is was presented but not dwelt on. The piety of the moral didn’t overpower the end of the film turning into an “I love you — you love me” Barney moment.
Somehow this could not make up for the underwear flinging and clueless acting in the film. Just because Murphy is cute and Kutcher is well known is no excuse to let them act like total idiots devoid of any common sense.
Some people should not be allowed to be in movies; the rest of us would suffer a lot less.
If “Dude Where’s My Car?” is your favorite movie or if you think Adam Sandler is the best actor on Earth, you will probably like this film more than you should. However, if you like sincerity in the characters you see on the screen, then let “Just Married” just disappear.
Jared Sterzer is a senior majoring in business information systems. Comments can be sent to jwsterz@cc.usu.edu.