Movie Review: Something Borrowed (2011)

An attempt at a romantic comedy in which all the characters are unlikable and imitative, Something Borrowed may as well be referring to the whole premise: construct a film by borrowing all the elements from other, better efforts. The movie is populated by the types of people who never seem to need to work for a living. They just party, drink, argue, drink some more, and bed-hop. The characters are only defined by their relationships, and these are certainly not pretty.

Maybe because of all that drinking there is no shortage of stupefyingly poor judgement as a game of bed carousel unfolds and a love triangle morphs first into a square and then a pentagon. The screenplay by Jennifer Snyder Urman is utterly lacking in wit or charm, leaving the characters just struggling against their own obnoxiousness, but thankfully at least they all deserve each other. Director Luke Greenfield, who has the more tolerable The Girl Next Door (2004) to his name, directs Something Borrowed in what appears to be a comatose state. Not even the generally reliable New York scenery is able to save the film from consummate boredom.

Something Borrowed is worse than many made-for-TV movies, and while Kate Hudson's career appears to have dead-ended, it would be tragic if Ginnifer Goodwin's potential is wasted on more brain dead tripe like this.

Rachel (Goodwin) is the cute brunette lawyer, best friends since childhood with the blond and wild Darcy (Hudson). Anything Darcy wants, Darcy gets, usually with Rachel's help, and this includes Dex (Colin Egglesfield, a creepy hybrid of a young Tom Cruise and a young Rob Lowe). Dex and Rachel were friends in law school, but when Darcy made her move on Dex, Rachel easily yielded. Now Darcy and Dex are getting married, but Dex and Rachel are rediscovering their feelings for each other.

Will Rachel risk her friendship for the sake of her love? Will Dex call off the wedding that he now realizes is a big mistake? Will anyone care?

Actually, Ethan (John Krasinki) seems to care: he is good friends with both Rachel and Darcy, and he would like Rachel to stand up for herself, but maybe that's because Ethan has a crush on Rachel. But Dex's friend Marcus (Steve Howey) only cares about being the most selfish version of himself that he can be, to satisfy his juvenile lust for women. Rachel betrays her friendship, Darcy betrays Dex, Dex betrays Darcy, Rachel breaks Ethan's heart, and Marcus gets himself a baby. By that point the best thing that can happen is for the end credits to roll to halt the agony and mercy-kill this miserable attempt at creating entertainment.

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