Rating: 3/10
Running Time: 94 minutes
UK Certificate: 12a
During one scene in Just Married, a planeload of passengers burst into spontaneous applause, such is their over-whelming joy at hearing the two lead characters finally shut up. After sitting through an hour and a half of this, chances are you’ll know exactly how they feel.
In this cliché-packed rom-com which struggles to produce a single original idea, Brittany Murphy plays Sarah, the mouse-eyed posh-pants swept off her feet by deadbeat radio host Tom (Ashton Kutcher). Before long the seemingly mis-matched pair have plonked rings on each other’s fingers and flown off on honeymoon to Europe, where it appears to be their aim to bump into as many continental stereotypes as is humanly possible. Cue a trip on a gondola, calling a stroppy moustachioed Frenchman a frog”, and walking up a flight of stairs behind a flatulent Italian woman.
Of course, there’s trouble in paradise, and both lovebirds have to confront the perils of temptation – Sarah from her smarmy reappearing ex Peter (Christian Kane), and Tom from a yo-yo-drawered bar-room floozy with a non-descript accent. Why Tom attracts the attentions of this buxom admirer in the first place is completely baffling, as is the fact that she’s prepared to wait for him in the bar for what must be at least a couple of hours while he escapes through a restroom window and engages in further less-than-humorous capers before finally returning to the scene.
As the hapless newlyweds repeatedly fall out and make up again, the film veers uncomfortably between Bottom-style slapstick and gushy moralistic claptrap. Only the enthusiastic performances of the two lead players saves the film from the straight-to-video fate it probably deserves.”
It's Got: Nothing that Planes, Trains & Automobiles doesnt do a hundred times better.
It Needs: Originality.
Summary
The kind of film most of us thought Hollywood had gotten out of its system during the 80s.