Chaos Theory.

"A predictable romantic dramedy that isn't particularly tender, moving or amusing, Chaos Theory suffers first and foremost from featuring the least engaging couple to headline a movie in some time," writes Laura Kern in the New York Times. "If the bland [Ryan] Reynolds and the grating [Emily] Mortimer are Hollywood's idea of the latest in romantic leads, then we're in trouble."

"From over-familiar beginnings - a wry bad-boy bachelor best friend whose idea of a good time is (head-slap) to 'go to Rascals and play some blackjack' - the plot off-roads into almost free-associative happenstance," writes Nick Pinkerton in the Voice. "Reynolds, called to 180 from anal nebbish to feral beast, is beautifully committed, but he gets no help on the other side of the camera."

In the New York Sun, Nicolas Rapold agrees that this is "a charmless and tedious comedy hidden behind the title of a straight-to-video thriller." So he'd rather concentrate on Reynolds: "His specialty, or at least the shtick I like most, is a contained mania that frays into vulnerability. In Just Friends, and portions of Chaos Theory, there is an amusing and affecting disconnect between an under-his-breath motormouth and the thought bubble above him - a kind of self-observed panic, hunching his action-jock bulk. The flip side to the mood is a frantic impatience, often absurd and ultimately deflated in a scene of terrible realization."

But "Reynolds, so commanding in the framing sequence as the wily father with a life lesson, seems adrift in a sloppy story that is less chaotic than indifferently random," writes Sean Axmaker in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

"For all his squinty-eyed good looks, boyish edginess, and experience in such comedies as Just Friends and Definitely, Maybe, Reynolds is neither romantic nor funny," writes Desson Thompson in the Washington Post. "Here, he's pitched too sharp and serious, even for a movie about love's darkest downs."

"Just when it hits its giddy comic stride, Chaos Theory retreats into conventional, sentimental terrain," writes Dennis Harvey in the San Francisco Bay Guardian.

"Of the many facile ironies at play in Chaos Theory, the title may be the biggest: How can a movie so stuffed with writerly contrivances call itself Chaos Theory?" Scott Tobias at the AV Club.

"You know what they always say about stories," writes Jim Emerson at RogerEbert.com. "When it comes down to it, there are really only two: somebody goes somewhere (fish out of water), or a stranger arrives (familiar water, unknown fish). Chaos Theory is neither, sandwiched between both. Dramatically it's neither fish nor fowl, so you can't quite tell if the sandwich is tuna salad or chicken salad."

"Chaos Theory is not exactly bad, but it disappointingly never really discovers the movie that it wants to be," writes Mark Olsen in the Los Angeles Times.

Posted by dwhudson at April 11, 2008 8:01 AM