4 out of 10
 

Just Another Teen Movie

"Just Married" is just another flick written by Sam Harper and directed by Shawn Levy, a pair who have amply shown their approach to quality with the aptly named "Cheaper By The Dozen," films upon which that they have also worked as a team. A clone of "Meet the Parents" and its sequel, it features not only the same basic storyline of an ordinary guy, but it even includes some identical jokes, including the accidents of the guy hitting his girl in the face with a ball and a mishap with a loved pet and the girl having the too-good-to-be-true, rich achiever ex-boyfriend.

Tom (Ashton Kutchner) who reads the traffic on the radio, falls in love with Sarah McNerty (Brittney Murphy), a wealthy girl from Beverly Hills who has a passion and degree in Art History, and soon her parents have teamed up with her ex-boyfriend, Peter Prentis (Christian Kane) to undermine the marriage. After a few mishaps at their wedding, the Tom and Sarah fly off to a honeymoon , where every lame urban legend from the travel industry and all the old slapstick standby gags from teen comedy flicks, from cockroaches to vibrators and the inevitable weird hick with the pickup truck, is acted out on the screen in correct, systematic, methodical sequence. And as they are thrown out of their Hotel in the Alps and deal with a sleazy hotel in Venice that is worse than a redlight motel, their grief is amplified by their own deeds that are Hollywood shallow and stupid. And why Europe? Well, duh! Doesn't everyone know that we Europeans are all aggressive and unfriendly to visiting Americans, because we don't understand how much better they are than us?

The charm of Brittney Murphy is usually able to lift even the most dire of movies, but "Just Married" is beyond what even a dumb waiter should be seen in. Meanwhile, for Ashton Kutchner, "Just Married" is clearly very much a stepping stone movie. I'm sure that we can certainly expect to see him leave the world of "Dude, Where's My Car" and "That's 70's Show" and appear in more mature ones like "Dude Where's My Wrinkly Old Wife" and "Those 70 Face Lifts Show", now he himself is married to Demi Moore.

Despite all the weakness of the script and stale routines, Murphy and Kutchner do show a powerful chemistry and the flick will provide even the most dour with the occasional chuckle..but probably little more.