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Still "Life"

With Halloween less than a month away, Katherine Heigl's latest, "Life as We Know It", is positioned to be the chick flick antidote to a rampant string of horror movies. And it is. It's also neither particularly good nor particularly offensive, not to mention particularly memorable. So in other words, the perfect movie to drag your date to after seeing "Let Me In" or "Case 39".

The story, written by newcomers Ian Deitchman and Kristin Rusk Robinson, is completely rehashed. Think: "Baby Boom" (remember that one?) meets "Knocked Up" meets "Three Men and a Baby". Type-A Holly (Ms. Heigl, playing the same character she always does) and womanizing Messer (Josh Duhamel) are willed their best friends' baby girl when the couple dies in a car accident. Of course, instead of grieving, the pair - who can't stand each other - promptly forget everything they know about babies (seriously? Are there women in their 30s who can't change a diaper?) and become even more self-absorbed than they already were. Cue lots of verbal sparring and clashing lifestyles that is repetitive after a while but engaging enough that they're not unlikeable.

Hayes MacArthur and the ever-lovely Christina Hendricks are the pair's doomed friends. And you pretty much know they're doomed from scene one. Josh Lucas is surprisingly dry as Holly's Mr. Right, but still manages to be most everything a thirty-something with a baby would want in a man (except interesting). With sexual tension, a little slapstick and some truly laugh out loud moments, Director Greg Berlanti has all of the elements of a decent romatic comedy here, but it just doesn't quite come together. The actors are acting, the chemistry only superficial.

Messer and Holly's baby raising hijinx are so self-consciously inept, one wonders how they can have spent so much time with this young family and absorbed so little about taking care of a child. It's a little pathetic, but then, it's also pretty funny. And if vampires and demons are not your thing, it's probably just the thing to pass a rainy autumn afternoon.