Something Borrowed: Forcing the Formula

Romantic comedies exist in a fantasy world where the rules of life and love are dictated almost entirely by irrationality intended to provide a vicarious satisfaction to an audience that feels they've come up short when it comes to achieving life goals and experiencing emotional satisfaction.  Strangely enough, the audience for romantic comedies are not ignorant of this fact and despite a certain level of self-awareness and clairvoyance in recognizing and predicting the tired formulas baked into romantic comedies, they thirst for alterations to these patterns, even if only on a microscopic level, in order to be satiated by the genre.  This is the only conclusion I can reach to explain why Something Borrowed exists as anything more than just a bestselling novel.

At the outset of Something Borrowed, Rachel (Ginnifer Goodwin) has just walked into her surprise 30th birthday party.  A meek and somewhat socially feeble lawyer, Rachel settled into living a life she feels she should as opposed to one she wants long ago.  Part of her personality can no doubt be explained by her contrasting relationship with Darcy (Kate Hudson), a wretchedly shallow and obnoxious girl with whom the sweet Rachel has inexplicably been best friends since they were little girls.  As long as they've been friends, Darcy has always gotten what she's wanted and Rachel has always, I don't know, breathed oxygen, I guess.  Rachel's other friend, Ethan (John Krasinski), is more Rachel's speed, except for the fact that he feels she deserves to be happy and should do whatever she can to ensure that happens.  In romantic comedies, Ethan is typically the gay motivational friend.  Except in Something Borrowed he's straight.  Except he pretends to be gay to avoid a relationship with a clingy stalker girl. 

For the last six years, Rachel has essentially wallowed in self-loathing masked as selflessness because Darcy has been dating and is now engaged to Dex (Colin Egglesfield), the man with whom Rachel has been enamored since their days in NYU law school and who is also living a life that others think he should live.  It was Darcy's upfront nature that intimidated Rachel out of admitting her feelings to Dex and apparently what attracted him to Darcy. 

After the party and a few more drinks, Rachel admits the feelings she used to/still has for Dex and Dex, with a kiss in the back of a cab, confirms reciprocity.  Fast forward to the next day when they wake up in bed together, and suddenly they've got a problem: new feelings have been stirred up, but the wedding is just two months away.  Darcy is Rachel's best friend and Dex's fiancé, and society dictates that once one gets a certain distance down a path in life, there's no going back.  It's the mantra that both Rachel and Dex have been unwillingly living their whole adult lives.  Is it too late for them to do anything about it?

If you care, then I'm not sure if you read the opening paragraph of this review carefully enough.  If you're even peripherally aware of the tropes of romantic comedies, then you already know the answer to the question of if it's too late or not, but sticking to a formula is not the film's biggest crime; that indictment falls instead on the fact that Something Borrowed makes motions to go in an unexpected, respectable direction only to hedge its bets and fall in line with the same wish-fulfillment fluff as everything else out there.  For the first half of the narrative, Something Borrowed is actually surprisingly honest about the flaws of its main characters: Ethan makes no bones about calling Dex a coward for not making a decision about his feelings for Rachel, and Rachel, to her credit, makes the noble but painful decision to sit on her feelings for Dex due to her recognition that it was her own fault she passed up the opportunity six years prior.  Additionally, the casting of Goodwin in the lead role was a stroke of ingenuity as her girl next door looks and charm are enough to make us believe in her appeal while avoiding any chance of disconnect between an audience and a far too attractive lead.  As her only other male companion, John Krasinski is delightfully smarmy and sarcastic and provides the film's only genuine laughs.

But then about midway through the film, Something Borrowed ditches the aspirations of its namesake novel and settles for appeasing the lowest common denominator.  While the first half of the film upholds some semblance of individuality, the second half features way too many flowery speeches, too many strings swelling at the right time and a much too convenient happenstance to feign respectability.  Around the end of Act II, Something Borrowed appears to be moving in a direction that would be unexpected and refreshing, but instead chooses to pander to a nonsensical conclusion that's more safe than it is believable.  Part of this can be blamed on the fact that the Darcy character isn't given a single positive attribute and therefore, it's hard to convey a sense of guilt and ambiguity when it comes to the outcome of the affair, but most of it can be blamed on the fact that, in all actuality, Dex and Rachel are morons. 

If Something Borrowed is to be believed, then six years ago Rachel made the biggest mistake of her life by passing up the opportunity to admit her feelings for Dex.  Darcy's being a bitch and ignorance to the fact that it's an asshole move to ask out your best friend's crush aside, six years of drama and self-deception still are only made possible by the fact that when Darcy dared Dex to ask her out, Dex asked her out.  This idiocy could be excused if Dex had had no feelings for Rachel, but he did and therefore, two conclusions can be reached: 1) Dex intentionally chose Darcy over Rachel, or 2) he was too much of a coward to turn Darcy away.  Either way, is that really the kind of guy we want our protagonist to end up with?  Or, if it comes back to living vicariously through a romantic comedy, is that the kind of guy you would want to end up with?