Entertainment

June 25, 2007

Killer cast can’t save flimsy film

ROBERT W. BUTLER McClatchy Newspapers

The tepid comedy “The Ex” is noteworthy mostly for assembling a killer cast of players and then doing hardly anything with them.

Tom (Zach Braff in full “Scrubs” mode) is a loveable slacker who can’t keep a job — mostly because he cannot abide the b.s. endemic to the modern workplace.

He has survived thus far because his wife Sofia (Amanda Peet) is a well-paid Manhattan lawyer.

But now they’re expecting, and Tom has promised he’ll step up so that Sofia can be a stay-at-home mom.

This necessitates their moving to Sofia’s hometown in Ohio, where Tom has been offered a job in his father-in-law’s ad agency.

The “Ex” of the title is Chip (Jason Bateman), the top creative thinker at the ad agency.

Chip has been in a wheelchair since boyhood and works his handicap for maximum effect both on the job and in his personal life — a personal life that includes a torrid high-school encounter with Sofia.

Now Chip does everything he can to undermine Tom on the job, while ensuring that Tom’s ever-increasing paranoia drives a wedge into his marriage to Sofia.

Director Jesse Peretz (“The Chateau”) and writers David Guion and Michael Handelman have a workable idea here, but with the exception of a few funny moments (like a delivery-room scene early on) they’ve come up with material more fitting for a so-so TV sitcom.

What’s really galling, though, is that “The Ex” is packed with familiar funny faces (Paul Rudd, Charles Grodin, Mia Farrow, Donal Logue, Josh Charles, recent Oscar nominee Amy Adams and “SNL” vets Amy Poehler and Fred Armisten), most of whom don’t get to do anything funny.

About the only person here who seems to be working hard for laughs is Braff. Even Bateman, who was so brilliantly hysterical on TV’s “Arrested Development,” is denied any major comic moments.

And that’s a crime.

IF YOU GO

If you go

What: “The Ex”

Starring: Zach Braff, Amanda Peet and Justin Bateman

Directed by: Jesse Peretz

Rated: PG-13 for sexual content, brief language and a drug reference.

Running time: 90 minutes

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