A Feel-Good Trifle
With the onslaught of giant, bloated action epics and moronic teen comedies that marks the summer movie season, it's nice that a short and sweet romantic comedy has been offered as a respite. The Jamie Foxx vehicle Breakin' All the Rules doesn't cover any new territory, nor does it offer any fresh insights, but it makes one feel comfortable and sort of fuzzy inside.
The trifle begins as all good comedies do with Foxx's Quincy Watson at the top of the world. He is a successful magazine editor in Los Angeles and has a beautiful model girlfriend (Bianca Lawson). On the night he is to announce his engagement to said girlfriend, she dumps him and runs off to Paris with the best man. Following quickly, Quincy quits his job in protest of being made to fire 15% of the magazine's staff, a task his nebbish boss Philip Gascon (Peter MacNicol) is too afraid to do himself. Wallowing in self pity, Quincy begins writing letters to his ex-girlfriend which morph into a how-to break up with your lover book, dragging him out of the depths of despair.
However, with all romantic comedies, our hero needs a love interest and this materializes in the form of Nicky Callas (Gabrielle Union), who happens to be the girlfriend of Quincy's cousin Evan Fields (Morris Chestnut), setting in motion the kind of comedy of errors that is at once painless and predictable.
Based on the experiences of writer/director Daniel Taplitz, the idea behind Breakin' All the Rules is clever—taking the same theory behind firing employees and applying it to love relationships. And the principles serve as some of the most amusing parts of the movie, particularly in the scenes with Quincy advising boss Gascon on how to break up with barracuda girlfriend Rita (Jennifer Esposito).
Though Breakin' All the Rules is nice and everything works out as expected, there is little tension and few twists in its presentation, making the last 15 minutes a bit dull. Quincy's ex-girlfriend comes back—of course. There's a couple of romantic mix ups between Quincy and Nicky—of course. There's little about how the rules are broken—it's not clear that they are per se, which is sort of a problem given the title.
The cast is uniformly solid. Foxx has a good romantic, leading man quality that he balances with his natural gift for goofiness. Union is beautiful and smart and has a nice chemistry with both Foxx and Chestnut, whose player Evan is an effective balance between oily and charming. Esposito and MacNicol's performances are the most overtly comic, and their mismatched lovers are the most in need of the book. Esposito is given the only really insightful monologue and it's a comic gem. MacNicol is just plain weird and his confrontation with Foxx near the end is one of the few really funny bits.
Though not laugh-out-loud funny, Breakin' All the Rules is a relentlessly amusing and lightly romantic alternative to the summer blockbusters.
The trifle begins as all good comedies do with Foxx's Quincy Watson at the top of the world. He is a successful magazine editor in Los Angeles and has a beautiful model girlfriend (Bianca Lawson). On the night he is to announce his engagement to said girlfriend, she dumps him and runs off to Paris with the best man. Following quickly, Quincy quits his job in protest of being made to fire 15% of the magazine's staff, a task his nebbish boss Philip Gascon (Peter MacNicol) is too afraid to do himself. Wallowing in self pity, Quincy begins writing letters to his ex-girlfriend which morph into a how-to break up with your lover book, dragging him out of the depths of despair.
However, with all romantic comedies, our hero needs a love interest and this materializes in the form of Nicky Callas (Gabrielle Union), who happens to be the girlfriend of Quincy's cousin Evan Fields (Morris Chestnut), setting in motion the kind of comedy of errors that is at once painless and predictable.
Based on the experiences of writer/director Daniel Taplitz, the idea behind Breakin' All the Rules is clever—taking the same theory behind firing employees and applying it to love relationships. And the principles serve as some of the most amusing parts of the movie, particularly in the scenes with Quincy advising boss Gascon on how to break up with barracuda girlfriend Rita (Jennifer Esposito).
Though Breakin' All the Rules is nice and everything works out as expected, there is little tension and few twists in its presentation, making the last 15 minutes a bit dull. Quincy's ex-girlfriend comes back—of course. There's a couple of romantic mix ups between Quincy and Nicky—of course. There's little about how the rules are broken—it's not clear that they are per se, which is sort of a problem given the title.
The cast is uniformly solid. Foxx has a good romantic, leading man quality that he balances with his natural gift for goofiness. Union is beautiful and smart and has a nice chemistry with both Foxx and Chestnut, whose player Evan is an effective balance between oily and charming. Esposito and MacNicol's performances are the most overtly comic, and their mismatched lovers are the most in need of the book. Esposito is given the only really insightful monologue and it's a comic gem. MacNicol is just plain weird and his confrontation with Foxx near the end is one of the few really funny bits.
Though not laugh-out-loud funny, Breakin' All the Rules is a relentlessly amusing and lightly romantic alternative to the summer blockbusters.
