IMDb plot summary: After being cut from the USA softball team and feeling a bit past her prime, Lisa finds herself evaluating her life and in the middle of a love triangle, as a corporate guy in crisis competes with her current, baseball-playing beau.
Directed by James L. Brooks. Starring Reese Witherspoon, Paul Rudd, Owen Wilson, and Jack Nicholson.
This movie has some really good moments trapped inside a slightly-too-long script. The characters are all very nicely fleshed out -- none of them are two-dimensional stereotypes. I was especially impressed with Owen Wilson's character, who could easily have been turned into the movie's villain, but instead he seems like a regular guy -- somewhat arrogant and entitled and certainly the wrong man for Reese Witherspoon, but not malicious or vicious.
Speaking of Reese Witherspoon, I *really* liked her character too. She's not the stereotypical "strong female character" that I find so annoying, but nor is she a spineless doormat. She feels like a real person. Even though my personality is not very much like hers, I related to her just on the basis of her being a fully developed character. Nice.
All that being said, though, I wish this had been tightened up a little bit. The characters get somewhat lost in the two-hour runtime, and I'm a little worried that six months from now I'll mostly remember the movie's length and won't remember how much I liked the people in it. We shall see.
3 stars.
Flickchart: #820 out of 2132, below Peter Pan (1960) and above All That Jazz.
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