A
film review by Claudia Puig for USAToday.com on June 8, 2010.
Killers is a lifeless
romantic action comedy that might as well have been concocted in a broken
beaker, given the paucity of chemistry between the lead actors. Katherine Heigl plays Jen, a woman
trying gamely to get over a break-up. The strange way she decides to do this is
to take a trip to the romantic French Riviera with her overbearing dad (Tom Selleck) and dipsomaniac mom (Catherine O'Hara).
In
Nice, she meets Spencer (Ashton Kutcher)
in an elevator and essentially follows him down to the beach like an eager
puppy. He inexplicably finds that so delightful that he asks her out. They fall
swiftly in love and get married. If you buy that premise, then maybe the rest
of the story won't seem so preposterous.
As
it turns out, Spencer is a hit man who had been dying to go straight for
reasons that are never made clear. Along comes Jen with her down-to-earth ways
and alleged nerdy smarts and he gives up the glamorous assassin's life to move
to suburbia and get a boring day job.
But,
in a few years, unsavory types from his former life come after Spencer. What
comes next is both ridiculous and tedious, simultaneously banal and
far-fetched. A movie in which anybody — neighbor, friend or colleague — could
be a murderer should provide at least a modicum of suspense and excitement. But
this dull romp doesn't seem to grasp that concept.
Heigl
and Kutcher have negligible romantic chemistry. Ditto for Selleck and O'Hara.
Laughs built around flatulence and vomit hardly belong in a story about a
married couple running for their lives.
Director
Robert Luketic seems to be going
through the motions in this comedy, not coming close to his conventional yet
charming 2001 hit Legally Blonde.
Everything about this movie feels forced, and worst of all, glaringly unfunny.
Luketic — and Heigl's — last film, the contrived The Ugly Truth, is suddenly looking better by comparison.
When
Jen finds out that her husband was a professional assassin, her first response
is: You couldn't just have tranny porn
like (a friend's husband). You had to be a spy.
Huh?
Jen's
hard-drinking mom has one comment after her daughter becomes romantically
involved with Spencer: The important
thing is you're finally with somebody attractive.
Are
we supposed to believe that someone who looks like Heigl is so geeky that she
has never dated someone good-looking? Why does Hollywood continually try to
pass off such unconvincing characterizations on audiences? Shades of Sandra
Bullock in All About Steve.
Even
the action scenes are beyond dull. It's hard to imagine a similarly plodding
siege of extended car chases and unexciting near-escapes.
Killers is dead on arrival:
miscast, horribly paced and murderously uninvolving. [Puig’s rating: * ½ out of
4]
Labels:
action, comedy, romance, thriller
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