I spent a lot of time paying attention to first-time director Adam Shankman's deftly cutting away whenever Jennifer Lopez's huge ass got anywhere near the screen. Take a look, because I'm completely serious. Each time she turned around or walked away, Shankman would cut or the camera would mysteriously move to a plant, so as to save the audience the pain of having to see her gargantuan rump. One can be pretty sure there was probably a clause in Shankman's contract that stated simply: "Any shot of Jennifer's ass will result in the director having to answer to Puff's boyz."Lopez plays wedding planner Mary Fiore, who avoids the whole dating scene because she can't get over her last failed relationship, which ended six years ago when her man found another woman. Just as she thinks there's no hope, she meets Dr. Steve Edison (Matthew McConaughey) only to find out that he's betrothed to Fran Donnolly (Bridgette Wilson-Sampras), Mary's newest client. Get this, too: Mary is supposed to be Italian. Okay, Hispanic and Italian, they're the same. Whatever.
One of the keys to this film is not rooting for Mary's competition for Steve. That's not exactly hard when the other woman is Bridgette Wilson-Sampras. I think at one time I thought she was hot, but looking at her now, I started to think I could put a cow out to pasture on that space between her eyebrows. That's the kind of crevasse that shows up on a satellite map. And take a look at her whacked-out eyebrows. Those things are at such an odd angle that I started to think that if I took a shovel and started digging at her nose, I'd find buried treasure. Then there's McConaughey, who'd be an appealing actor if only every time he delivered a line, he didn't look like a starving St. Bernard about to put his lips on a bone. Really, the guy looks like he could start drooling at any moment.
Are women really so pathetic that getting married is all they think about? Are they such dependent creatures that their lives go unfulfilled if they don't? That seems to be at the heart of this movie. Unless Mary finds a husband, she's a failure as a person. Not only is this a ridiculous societal expectation, but let's face it, if women are going to measure their self-esteem by the men they marry, there is going to be dramatic increase in the number of women found lying face-down in gutters across America.
