The Ex

Reviewed by Rich Drees

     When principal breadwinner Sofia (Amanda Peet) decides to leave her job in order to be a stay at home mom for their newborn son, slacker Tom (Zach Braff) moves the family from Manhattan to Ohio to take a job at the advertising agency where his father-in-law (Charles Grodin) works. Arriving at his new job, he finds himself placed under the supervision of Chip (Jason Bateman), the wheelchair-bound, high school friend of Sofia, with whom she had a brief romance. While everyone else sees Chip as a great guy, Tom realizes that he has a dark side and is intent on wresting Sophia away from him. The problem is that when Tom tries to tell Sophia what is happening, she doesn’t believe him.

     With a cast list of strong comic actors to its credit, its surprising how incredibly unfunny The Ex actually is. One would think that such a sitcom plot would be well serviced by Braff and Bateman, the leads of two of the most critically acclaimed television comedy series in the past several years- Scrubs and Arrested Development. Unfortunately, that is not the case. It is also distressing to the see the likes of Donal Logue and Amy Poehler being wasted in roles that afford them little screen time. With the film’s running length of less than 90 minutes – and even then it seems to drag on – it seems apparent that much of their work probably hit the cutting room floor.

     However, the lack of laughs in The Ex doesn’t lie with the actors themselves but rather with the movie’s weak, under developed script. The screenplay asks a lot from its audience. It wants us to believe that Bateman’s character is such a master manipulator, having for years fooled his fellow Ohioans but still be transparently obvious to the New Yorker just meeting him for the first time?

     Storywise, the film seems to lurch along from one complication to the next, piling problems onto its characters that could be easily cleared up if they actually talked to one another for a few minutes rather than talking past each other. Comedy is coming out of actions imposed on the characters by the needs of the screenplay rather than through the actions and reactions of the characters themselves. There is also no feel that the film’s action accelerates towards any sort of climax. While the plot does resolve itself, it happens almost matter-of-factly. Additionally, the subplot involving Peet’s character adjusting to life as a stay at home mom is perfunctory at best, allowing no build up to the scene where she verbally lets loose on a gathering of new mothers performing various ridiculous, New Age-y “bonding exercises” with their children. Many of the film’s scenes don’t end strongly either. Often Braff is left to cap the scene with an exasperated or befuddled look, perhaps mirroring the audience’s reactions to the unfunny antics unfolding before them.