Thornhill at the Movies

Jane Goodale (Ashley Judd) is the talent booker for 'Diane Richards Live', a New York talk show that has just been picked up for syndication. Ray Brown (Greg Kinnear) has just been hired from a Washington station as the new Producer. Eddie Alden (Hugh Jackman) is the writer/director of the show. Jane falls in love with Ray. Ray asks her to move in with him. Ray gets cold feet. Jane develops a theory about cows (don't ask). Jane becomes Eddie's roommate. Jane's attraction to womanizer Eddie grows as she also reconsiders Ray.

"Someone Like You" is your basic girl-meets-boy-boy-becomes-jerk-can't-decide-whether-attractive-womanizer-is-the-right-guy story. We have all seen this story hundreds, if not thousands of times. If "Someone Like You" were just that, it would be a pleasant diversion starring attractive actors.

Unfortunately, Jane comes up with a theory about cows and their mating rituals. She finds that they are very similar to that of humans. Huh! Jane is the very young talent booker on a syndicated talk show. How did she become such an expert in biology? She buys a lot of books at Barnes and Noble and then lays on top of them. You think I'm kidding.

Because the ludicrous 'theories' that Jane Goodale (get it?) comes up with are referred to repeatedly, they completely undermine any chance that we might have to get to know or believe the characters were real. The theories keep bringing us out of the story.

Judd and Jackman are both very attractive and manage to generate some chemistry. Unfortunately, this is one of those stories in which we never see them kiss until the very end. I'm not really revealing anything here. You can tell this will happen from the very beginning.

"Someone Like You" is supposed to be a romantic comedy, yet I only laughed a couple of times throughout. Not very successful. It is also a classic example of a 'chick flick'. However, calling "Someone..." a chick flick is as insulting as calling "Exit Wounds" a guy film. Neither film is any good and prescribing them to a particular group only insults that group. More accurately, "Someone Like You" is just a bad film. Be careful you don't step in it.