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Screen Scene: “The Dilemma”

Credit: UNIVERSAL PICTURES

"The Dilemma"
Directed by Ron Howard
Universal PICTURES
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By Saba Mohtasham

Jan. 14, 2011 12:45 a.m.

The title “The Dilemma” may refer to whether you tell your best friend his wife’s cheating on him, but the bigger dilemma in this movie seems to be how it can call itself a comedy when everyone in it is so angry the whole time.

Vince Vaughn plays Ronny, the charming half of an auto design firm working on its biggest deal yet. The other half, Nick, played by Kevin James, is the flustered brains behind the operation who always seems to have some sort of physical ailment. The two have been best friends since college, and the strength of their bond is never in question.

Ronny witnesses Nick’s wife Geneva (Winona Ryder ““ fresh from stabbing herself in the face in “Black Swan” and now stabbing her husband in the back) with another man. He is so upset that he doesn’t seem to care that that bed of poisonous plants he fell into will cause him “challenging” urination.

He can never find quite the right time to break the news to Nick, who’s too busy freaking out about making a motor loud enough, because apparently loud equals sexy in the auto world.

While Ronny tries to figure out how to break the news, he tries to get evidence of the affair because Geneva threatens to deny it. He follows her and her lover Zip (a tattooed and surprisingly funny Channing Tatum) in his bright blue convertible. I’m no expert on tailing, but I probably wouldn’t do it in a collector’s edition. Then again, I wouldn’t answer my cell phone while hiding on Zip’s deck either.

When he is shockingly caught, he finds himself fighting Zip, who inexplicably keeps calling the much older Ronny “boy.” The two duke it out until Zip’s very expensive-looking fish are flopping on the floor and Ronny’s threatening to burn his face off with a can of hair spray and a lighter.

Even though Zip’s the younger, buffer of the two, Ronny’s raw hatred for the pain this guy could cause his friend lets him hold his own.

Ronny is undoubtedly a good friend, but he’s just a little misguided. At his girlfriend’s parents’ 40th anniversary party, he makes a toast ranting about honesty being the only thing marriage needs to survive, but then he refuses to be honest with the woman he wants to marry about what the hell he’s talking about.

And the film only lightly touches on this, but Ronny doesn’t seem nearly as bothered when he learns that Nick hasn’t exactly been the perfect husband either. For some reason, the movie chooses to play Geneva up as the sole bad guy. Regardless of who knows what, almost all the characters seem perpetually pissed off.

Ronny’s mad because he saw his best friend’s wife with another man. She’s angry because her marriage is so screwed up, and she doesn’t think Ronny has the right to judge her. Zip is angry because Ronny killed his fish. And Nick’s angry because, even though he’s unaware of his wife’s infidelity, he’s really stressed out from work.

The only person who isn’t angry is Ronny’s girlfriend, Beth (Jennifer Connelly), who, frankly, should be because her boyfriend is inexplicably running around like a crazy person.

The only true happiness seems to come from Queen Latifah’s brief scenes as a fan of Ronny and Nick’s auto technology, which repeatedly gives her “lady wood,” and also from the happy face tattoo on Zip’s right butt cheek.

The film tends to take itself too seriously, with an imbalance of heavy scenes to light ones, complete with scores reminiscent of “Mission: Impossible” whenever Ronny’s playing detective. Vaughn and James aren’t even together in the majority of the scenes, which is unfortunate because they seem to have a lot of chemistry when they do collide ““ several times, literally.

E-mail Mohtasham at [email protected].

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Saba Mohtasham
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