A dad reviews the ads for ‘Life As We Know It’

October is a fabulous time of the year.  Every weekend has beautiful weather, there are numerous festivals and it’s great just to open the windows, nap or read.  With all of these pleasant activities it sure would take something magical to drag me out to the movie theatre.

Thankfully Life As We Know It seems to have nothing redeeming to drag the common dad away from relaxing at home. 

I was thumbing through a magazine and saw this advertisement for the movie.

WTF?   Maybe I’m thin skinned about the media’s perception of dumbass dads, but this ad spoke to me and not in a good way.    I’m cool with seeing a nice comedy about raising children, by witness of me and my wife having one, I love kids.  However, after seeing the trailer for the movie I realized that it’s a dramedy. 

Curse the dramady.    Too funny to be a drama, too serious to be a comedy.  Let’s give it an entirely new category that way women and men can enjoy it, plus in three years it’ll run continuously on Lifetime.

To be clear, I have not seen the movie.  The ad and plot description alone yells at me like kryptonite to Superman.   The plot:  happy couple has child, happy couple dies suddenly leaving the child to their haplessly opposite god parents, parenting ensues, laughter and love follow.  Fin.

Let’s pretend that I blacked out for a moment and didn’t hear or read the plot description.  That’s a stretch because it should’ve scared all dads away as quick as your wife saying, “Let’s clean out the closets today sweetie.”  If cleaning the closet or talk of this movie pops up, tell your wife you see a kitten in the street about to get hit by a care and run, run out of the house now.

However, I see that advertisement for the movie.  Dad’s what is the problem?

1.  The baby has been photo shopped and looks more a CGI character than a baby.  Also, look at the edges of the high chair.  Do you know of a white high chair that has the edges of the tray that clean?   And the toy on the tray.  Really?  If you have the toy while the child is eating, then the child will not eat, they will play.
2. The caring mom and the dumbass dad.  You can also substitute clueless or exhausted dad in lieu of dumbass dad if that makes you feel better.  Oh joy, as stereotypical as local television news stations doing a ‘crowded shopping mall story’ the day after Thanksgiving.    Dad and moms are tired, but to portray the dad as exhausted or disinterested and the mom as happy and doting is catering to stereotypes.
3. The television campaign is slightly better than the print one, but only slightly.  Ladies, really, have you ever left the bathroom with your babies’ poo on your face like our hapless mother in the trailer?  If the moms at Warner Brothers were the script consultants on this project then we’d better get DFCS out to L.A. stat.

 

I like Josh Duhamel, he’s a charming, likeable actor.  I’m not a fan of Katherine Heigl.   She could be cast in the next Batman movie and I still wouldn’t see it.  It’s possible I’m still resentful of watching more than one episode of Grey’s Anatomy.  But to sit through two seasons of that dreck, even after I realize that every episode is the same either proves that I love my wife or I had a recurring lobotomy on Thursday nights. 

Critics have been relatively kind to Life As We Know It, calling it a formulaic, romantic comedy.  I’ll let time be the judge and watch it in a couple years on cable.  If it’s anything close to While You Were Sleeping then I’ll eat my words, continue the lobotomy and watch syndicated Grey’s Anatomy.   For now the closest I’m getting to this title is Life As I Know It, with Bret Michaels on VH1.