An accident even lawyers shouldn't chase down (The Accidental Husband (DVD))

Member Name: Ailran

Product:	The Accidental Husband (DVD)
Date:	19/04/09 (225 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Uma Thurman looks good, Morgan is ok

Disadvantages: The plot and the chemistry between the leads

Anyone who has read my reviews will know that I am a sucker for a good Romantic Comedy. In fact even a bad one can be enjoyed on some level especially if it stars someone as stunning as Uma Thurman.
Sadly Accidental Husband has to be close on the worst Rom Com ever made. Mainly because the chemistry between Thurman and Colin Firth and Thurman and Jeffrey Dean Morgan is at the same level as my attempts at chemistry at school... ie non-existent. When the leads seem to have no palpable sense of getting on (on screen wise) then trying to believe they are in love in just fantasy.

The storylines in Rom Coms are always a little bit out of the ordinary. The search for true love often takes the main characters into situations they are not comfortable with, challenging them to be different and not stick to what they know and are used to. This is one of the 'laws' of Rom Coms and is, I think, why people love them so much.
With Accidental Husband though not only can the story not stand up any kind of close examination you also just don't feel that there is the remotest possibility of what you know is going to happen actually ever being likely in real life. The aforementioned lack of chemistry has a lot to do with it but the storyline is the main reason.

Dr. Emma Lloyd (Thurman) is a radio talk show host/agony aunt. She is enormously popular and doles out advice on relationships and men that it seems every single woman in New York listens to, if not relies upon!
One show a woman phones in and asks the good doctor for some advice on her forthcoming marriage. The advice given leads to her now jilted fiancé Patrick (Morgan) planning his revenge on the woman he sees as the cause of his being dumped. Not satisfied with any normal brand of revenge he comes up with a crazy idea. He gets one of his friends to hack into the council's computers and 'marry' Patrick and Emma, at least on paper.
With Emma's own marriage to Richard (Colin Firth) soon to take place it is only when the two of them go to apply for a wedding licence that Dr Lloyd's previous 'marriage' is discovered.

As the 'fake' marriage is actually legal, the paperwork proves it, Dr Lloyd has only one choice and that is to track down the man who seems to be her 'husband'.
When she finds him though what will she think of the care free, devil may care fireman when she compares him to her staid and dependable fiancé?

As you can see it is pretty standard Rom-Com fare, the normal plot with the usual little vagaries to make it a little bit different from the others in the genre.
I was actually bored by most of this, I can remember laughing a couple of times but not what actually made me laugh. It is just awful and there wasn't a single level on which it worked.
I do like Romantic Comedies, they are pretty close to being my favourite genre, but this one fails on so many levels. Right from the start trying to believe that all it takes is a little bit of hacking to create a legal marriage. Surely there must be some sort of paperwork involved, something that backs up a document on a computer?
The other big problem, and yes we are back to the chemistry thing again, is that you really cannot see any way in the world that Lloyd would be interested in Patrick in the slightest. Yes opposites do attract but there has to be something that keeps them stuck together, and if you cant feel the characters believe that then how can you?
Seeing as the major point of the movie is the dilemma between Lloyd and the two men she must choose between when you cant believe she would like Patrick it means that the film crashes and burns very quickly. This is a shame because the cast is pretty good and with a good script it could have made a very good rom-com. With the script that they do have though Thurman and Firth are pretty much lost, almost as if they gave up once they got to the set and realised how bad it was going to be.
Morgan though does manage to make the best of a bad job. He is funny and pulls of the man's man fireman part very well. If he had even a smidgeon of chemistry with Thurman the movie could have been saved, but one good performance cannot save a film... and this time is really doesn't!

Summary: An accident waiting to happen