This story has more twists and turns than a second-rate soap opera.

A movie that not only functions as a solid scarefest but a razor-sharp satire.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

This is one of those films that I almost turned off a couple times, but got hooked back in with the humor and wit. It's a definite off-the-wall romantic comedy with enough quirkiness to make the characters and the story lovable. The thing that kept turning me off was the constant reference to the need for therapy, therapists, and over-analysis by Ira, the main character who is neurotic and has been in the therapy system his whole life. Fortunately, everything else the movie has to offer helps alleviate the constant stress I experienced thinking over and over "just let it go, Ira! Choose to be happy and accept your wife and her love and imperfections!!!!" I think, for the general masses, this wouldn't be a huge issue, and overall would be seen as an enjoyable, quirky film with a great amount of humor, just enough drama, and a good touch of heart.

I'll skip right over how annoying it is that the camera constantly found itself buried in Chris Messina's somewhat ugly face and trout-like lips, and I'll go straight into why this sort of movie is destroying America...The final conclusion of this movie was as such: Marriage doesn't work. Marriage is outdated. There is no such thing as a loyal, happy, honest, fulfilling marriage. And if you marry someone, you will never be truly happy, you'll never truly know your partner, and you may eventually end up broken, lonely, and miserable--especially if you remain married.Okay...so what team of neurotic, philandering, adulterous, marriage-hating atheists wrote this film? I hardly know where to start. Are we to believe that instead of having committed, balanced, reasonable relationships with mature and loyal partners, we are instead supposed to have fleeting, unstable, unreliable, worthless, sex-based relationships? Are we supposed to spend our precious time on earth living with neurotic, unbalanced people who do not love us? People who only waste our resources while utterly failing to be a consistent, permanent partners in our lives? If that's the case, why half-step into unstable semi-committed relationships? If there are no ethics and no decency to be considered, no repercussions for our actions--no fallacy to opening up our lives to unstable people who exploit us, then why not just invest every coin into hookers and blow? Because you can't have it both ways. Either you WORK for a balanced, healthy monogamous relationship with a person that you can trust and love--or you descend into a bottomless pit of sexual exploitation.Worse, you will commit this exploitation OVER AND OVER AGAIN, as you date and then discard multiple partners. I don't mean to preach, but this type of irresponsible behavior is EXACTLY why there are so many embittered, angry, distrusting people in the dating world. They have believed and therefore practiced the godless drivel preached in films like this one.Marriage is not evil. It has not "expired." The institution of marriage is not the problem, nor is it the reason why any particular marriage failed. Adultery is the problem. Lying is the problem. Dishonesty, stealing, rage, abuse, distrust, laziness, misuse of joint resources, IMMATURITY--these are the reasons that marriages fail! The institution of marriage has not become "bad" just because a lot of people are too selfish, envious, unfaithful and greedy to fulfill marriage vows properly.I dislike any film that is arrogant enough to judge the institution of marriage, and worse, gives such an imbalanced, deceptive and dishonest conclusion. It just sets people up to be selfish and stupid, while they attempt to make the rest of humanity their unwitting victims.

The protagonist of this film, Ira Black (Chris Messina)--who has two analysts for parents and was preconceived as the glue for their upcoming marriage--is studying to become an analyst himself, and has been in therapy with the same analyst for 12 years. (The movie emphasizes the difference between psychiatrists and analysts, which boils down to: psychiatrists talk, while analysts listen--or daydream, plot infidelities, write their Hannuka cards, etc., etc.) Every day Ira breakfasts at a diner, but can never order by combo number, and always calls back his long-suffering "Greek waiter" (Spiro Malas) multiple times with wishy-washy additions and deletions (Ira never "knows" his own mind). Feeling fat, he decides to join New York City's famed Paris Health Club (actually used extensively as a filming site), where he meets serial nymphomaniac Abby (Jennifer Westfeldt), who always knows her mind--and takes out food exclusively from McDonald's. Beyond being seen with the offerings of the Golden Arches several times (and extolling the virtue of eating your fries while they're fresh and hot), Abby's ad jingle-producing dad Michael Willoughby (Fred Willard) apparently gets a piece of the McDonald's ad account. Maybe the video stores and down-loaders should be required to couple this rental with Morgan Spurlock's SUPERSIZE ME to counteract IRA & ABBY'S clearest message: if you eat at independent restaurants with character you're a neurotic wimp, but if you're loyal to McDonald's you're a fun-loving problem-solver who's good in bed. Hopefully this flick's producers (Declan Baldwin, Ged Dickersin, Ilana Levine, Stu Pollard, Douglas G. Smith, Jennifer Westfeldt, and Brad Zions) are each getting a lifetime of free clogged arteries--oops, I mean free food--from McDonald's.

Admittedly I'm hard on romantic comedies. Too often they are wildly unrealistic, filled with characters who are inexplicably wealthy and who act like people you just want to punch in the face because they're so neurotic and self-centered. At least this one doesn't have that problem.But it has a different problem. Westfeldt doesn't really address the movie's main questions. Is it best to just "go with it", or do you have to build your relationship like you would build a building? How important is marriage, and what's the point of it anyway? Why can't people talk to one another directly? What happens to your present when your past jumps up to haunt you? If you love each other, does it really matter what your life ambition is?These would be great things to think about, but instead Westfeldt bogs down the movie by having Ira's mom get into an affair with Abby's dad. Then when this news comes to light, everyone withdraws to their separate corners and plastic surgeons and therapists. (By the way, you could see the "therapists screw everything up" angle coming from the first five minutes of the movie - in fact, I'm still waiting for a "New York romance" movie to not involve a massive amount of complaining to therapists. Or analysts, as Ira's parents take pride in calling themselves.) Granted, it was at least funny to watch. But there's a scene near the end where Abby pulls in all the therapists, both sets of parents, herself, and Ira for a giant session. While everyone else starts yelling at each other, Ira and Abby look across the room at each other and mentally reconcile. The most telling thing to me was that at that moment, you could see how many unnecessary characters there were in the movie because the room was filled with them as Ira and Abby walked out together.