Both Abbie and Robert are right up to date when it comes to sexual open-mindedness. Robert still dates, and Abbie's OK with that, although when Abbie meets a guy named Ben (Benjamin Bratt), Robert turns into a green-eyed monster. That's because Ben wants to marry Abbie and move to New York, and where would that leave Robert? If you think this movie, which begins as a sexual comedy, is going to end up as a stultifying docudrama about child custody, with big courtroom scenes before the obligatory stern black female judge, you are no more than ordinarily prescient.
The movie's problem is that it sees every side of all issues. It sides with Robert's need to be a father, Benjamin's need to be a husband and lover, and Abbie's need to have a best friend, a husband, a lover, a son and a lawyer. Luckily there is plenty of money for all of this, because Abbie is a yoga instructor and Robert is a gardener, and we know what piles of money you can make in those jobs, especially in the movies. I wish the film had scaled its lifestyles to the realities of service industry workers, instead of having the characters live in the kinds of places where they can dance around the living room to (I am not kidding) Fred Astaire's "Steppin' Out" and have catered backyard birthday parties that I clock at $10,000, easy.
In describing the plot, I've deliberately left out two or three twists that had me stifling groans of disbelief. It's not that they're implausible; it's that they're not necessary. Any movie is bankrupt anyway when it depends on Perry Mason-style, last-minute unexpected courtroom appearances to solve what should be an emotional choice.
Rupert Everett, "openly gay," as they say, must have had to grit his teeth to get through some of his scenes. Consider a sequence where, as Abbie's best friend, he is delegated to pick up her house keys after she breaks up with her early boyfriend Kevin ("I want to date less complicated women," Kevin tells her).
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