Despite its pink cover and fluffy classification, Emily Giffin's bestseller "Something Borrowed" asked a lot of its readers — mainly to empathize with a heroine whose driving action of sleeping with, and later falling in love with, the fiance of her childhood best friend was, on its face, reprehensible. And Giffin was successful in probing the depths of a complex friendship with a history, the guilt of a cheating fiance and the strange liberation of a woman who'd always tried to do the right thing, often at the expense of her own happiness.
If any of these nuances existed in the "Something Borrowed" screenplay (not penned by Giffin), they were the casualty of rewrites. If Giffin wants to complain, she can cry into her piles of money. The eager fan who plunked down a portion of her paycheck to see "Something Borrowed" in theaters or DVD is probably not so lucky.
The casting isn't so bad: The gorgeous Ginnifer Goodwin can masquerade as mousy, John Krasinski makes an affably sarcastic best friend and Colin Egglesfield is as chiseled and preppy as his counterpart in the book. Interestingly, it's rom-com staple Kate Hudson who seems the most out of place. Sure, the character of Darcy is a party animal, a "mean girl," a woman with limited sensitivity and regard for others' feelings. But Hudson is so shrill, so cardboard and awful, that the viewer wonders why Goodwin and Eggleston ever tolerated her at all let alone remained loyal for so long.
"Something Borrowed" is the worst kind of romantic comedy in that it has no respect for its audience. The soundtrack is straight out of 2005, the childhood "photos" of Goodwin and Hudson painfully Photoshopped, the chemistry forced and stiff, Goodwin's wigs terribly fake. Finally, an added subplot makes a mockery of both homosexuals and women who are above a size 2. Insult? Meet injury.
While not groundbreaking literature — and not everything has to be to have merit — the book was able to garner genuine sympathy out of an awful situation. The screen adaptation, on the other hand, generates pain and disgust at every character, action and Photoshopped image.
Blu-ray extras include featurettes, deleted scenes and a gag reel. Gag indeed.
Film: 0 Yaps Extras: 0 Yaps