Someone Like -Wha?
by Don Larsson
A demonstration that similar form and similar content do not guarantee similar results: A couple of weeks ago in Newsweek, there was a little sidebar comparing the superficial similarities of Bridget Jones's Diary and Someone Like You. Each features young professional women (Renee Zellweger / Ashley Judd) interested in finding a suitable man; each woman gets involved with an attractive man who is also a jerk (Hugh Grant / Greg Kinnear); each woman is hostile to another man who seems to hold her in low esteeem (Colin Firth / Hugh Jackman) but is really her suitable man; both women do voiceover narration from their own writings (diary / book); both films feature couples embracing to a Van Morrison tune.

There is one big difference between the two, though: Bridget Jones's Diary is a very good movie, while Someone Like You (to be blunt) sucks.

What makes for the difference? It's not the freshness of the concept: SLY was released first, while BJD steals a lot of its structure from Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. It's not necessarily the acting. While the performances in BJD, are very good, there is potential in the cast of SLY. Ashley Judd can have a sweet vulnerability that is appealing even in a clunker like Where the Heart Is; Greg Kinnear has proven his abilities in other films; and Hugh Jackman does demonstrate some of the charisma he first brought to X-Men last year.

Although SLY suffers in editing and pacing compared to BJD, the real problem is in the writing. BJD is fresh and funny in its dialogue, unafraid to toss in literary allusions, and to play off the words with the images. SLY, on the other hand, is vapid in dialogue and continually stupid in its attempts at humor and self-reference. The characters mumble inanities about discovering who they really are at this stage of their lives; worse, they take themselves seriously, something that BJD would not do with such cliches.

The motivations for the characters are similarly inexplicable: Kinnear's character is either Afraid of Commitment or a Two-Timing Cad or a Self-Pitying Latter-Day Adolscent or a Passive-Aggressive Misogynist. Mostly, he's merely confused - but that is a result of how he is written, not of his character. There is not even much motivation for Jackman's sudden realization of his attraction to Judd (the trailers actually make it seem more plausible than the movie itself). And where Bridget evokes sympathy, Judd's character simply evokes sighs and rolling of the eyes. Worst of all, Ellen Barkin is utterly wasted in a too-rare performance.

The inanity and vapidity of dialogue are paralleled by the stupidity of the main plot device - a book that Judd's character comes to write, under a psuedonym, that tries to explain men's wandering ways, based on what she calls the "One-Cow Theory." The premise is that a bull, having had his way with a particular heifer, will avoid that cow altogether afterward. This is supposed to be High Humor, studded (so to speak) with direct addresses to the camera, cutaways to cattle breeders, and so on. Of course, Judd sees the error of her overgeneralization, but the whole thing falls as flat as a fresh cow pie, since there was no humor or even substance to the overgeneralization in the first place.

BJD zips along, even in its slow scenes; SLY actually has the power to stop time altogether; one emerges from the theater months older than when one went in. While BJD is sharp, perceptive and sure of where it is going, SLY seems to be standing in one place, flailing its arms while looking for someplace - any place!- to go. That impression is confirmed by the last song of the closing credits - an utterly baffling and pointless cover of The Talking Heads' "Burning Down the House" by Tom Jones! In the end, for all their similarities, there is just one defining feature that explains the success of Bridget Jones's Diary and the utter failure of Someone Like You: sheer intelligence--or the lack thereof.

CineScene, 2001