Starring: Ashley Judd, Greg Kinnear, Hugh Jackman
Director: Tony Goldwyn
Rated: M15+
WITH two hit films at the moment, Australia’s Hugh Jackman seems to be everywhere in the Australian cinema.
Swordfish and Someone Like You will not earn Hugh any acting awar
ds, but they are great for his exposure, and I am not just referring to the regular sight of him minus a shirt in both movies!
Someone Like You is a romantic comedy about what women want from men and why men cannot commit to long-term relationships. Jane Goodale (Ashley Judd) is a TV producer who unexpectedly falls in love with her new executive producer, Ray Brown (Greg Kinnear).
They are about to move into a unit together when, inexplicably, Ray breaks off the relationship and returns to his former girlfriend.
Broken-hearted and homeless, Jane moves in with sleazy fellow producer Eddie Allen (Hugh Jackman). Eddie is Jane’s opposite. He has no moral compass when it comes to sexual relationships and does not seek a long-term commitment. Their residential arrangements are strictly business, but guess what happens next?
Someone Like You provides pretty slim pickings with a few wonderful moments. Judd has a good emotional range and her character’s performance in the scene of the break-up with Ray is terrific. Another moving scene is when Jane’s sister Alice (Catherine Dent) and her faithful husband, Stephen (Peter Friedman) suffer a miscarriage of their longed-for child. Seeing the love of this faithful and monogamous couple turns Jane’s life around. And so it should.
Greg Kinnear is also a fine actor and Hugh Jackman, who needs to work on his US accent, has a great screen presence, but both men are poorly served by the emotional limitations their characters have in Elizabeth Chandler’s script.
The most annoying aspect to Someone Like You is the analogy of men to bulls and women to cows that runs almost to the end of the film. It serves to argue that bulls are not monogamous and by implication nor should women expect that men will be either.
Jane eventually sees the error of her thinking. Just as well because this idea is sexist toward women and men and is disempowering of a woman’s role in modern relationships. Likewise it insults the higher intelligence humanity has been given by which we can make the best choices about faithfully loving another person.
