The way the story goes, we follow a young, very fit woman (Cobie Smulders) as she makes her way in life working in a gym as a personal trainer. She is a very determined and fiercely independent woman who enjoys her life well enough, but she doesn't really seem to plan for the future. Instead, she concentrates on the road immediately ahead of her. I wouldn't have thought (after only seeing her as Samuel L. Jackson's right hand woman in The Avengers) that Cobie could carry a movie as the lead character, but she knocks it out of the park.
The strange thing is that Cobie doesn't get top billing. Instead, Guy Pearce get his name first on the posters, and it's even bigger on some of them. I guess he's the recognizable name, so it makes sense to put him first, and he certainly sells the Australian accent that he sports. He's playing the guy who owns the gym Cobie works at, and he's willingly bought into a philosophy about training and life that he interprets from videos of his hero that he watches on the internet. Guy is a solid actor, and he is in good enough shape that he plays the somewhat conflicted character very well.
In comes a guy from New York who represents very new money, Kevin Corrigan. This guy completes the love triangle as the overweight guy who vaguely wants to get into shape to try to win back his wife, and he inherited so much money that he doesn't really understand the worth of it anymore. It suits the character well, as he doesn't seem to actually want anything beyond emotional support that he never really got from his ex-wife.
The odd thing about the way the people interact is that it feels like Cobie and Guy have nothing in common, and they will never work as a couple, but it seems that way with every guy that Cobie encounters. I'd have been just fine if she never settled on a man to fill her life at all. She could just be a strong, independent woman who just lived her life. But this is Hollywood, so it feels like they shoehorned one of the guys in at the end.
Direction was good
Acting was very good
Story was surprisingly good
Dialog was very good
Editing was good
Bottom Line: A movie that was very much better than it had a right to be.
3.5/5
The odd thing about the way the people interact is that it feels like Cobie and Guy have nothing in common, and they will never work as a couple, but it seems that way with every guy that Cobie encounters. I'd have been just fine if she never settled on a man to fill her life at all. She could just be a strong, independent woman who just lived her life. But this is Hollywood, so it feels like they shoehorned one of the guys in at the end.
Direction was good
Acting was very good
Story was surprisingly good
Dialog was very good
Editing was good
Bottom Line: A movie that was very much better than it had a right to be.
3.5/5