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Getting in Touch With Your Past Life

Personally, I can’t say I have ever subscribed to the rom-com premise of re-connecting with past loves in order to find The One, which sounds strange coming from a guy who has managed to remain friends with most of his ex-girlfriends – so much so that my wife is Facebook friends with a number of them. The thing is, as meaningful as those women were, and largely still are, to me, we were not right for each other in the key make or break moments when and where we might have moved forward together as romantic partners. Thus, the love we shared took on another form, one that still continues to bind us together.

But that’s not sexy enough to sustain an onscreen adventure full of crazy mishaps, dashed expectations, and groaningly obvious moments of dawning self-awareness. In life, I would like to believe that we’re smarter than the somewhat character-deficient characters that grace the screens, but I know that’s not always the case. Which, I suppose is why we sometimes flock to theaters to watch others stumble through similar situations.

That’s a long-winded intro into David E. Talbert’s Baggage Claim, but it explains my initial resistance to what Montana Moore (Paula Patton) is going through. She’s an attractive but flighty flight attendant caught up in the whirlwind of constant movement. Eager to settle down, even mores after her younger sister (Lauren London), a college student announces her engagement, Montana harbors fears concerning her ability to commit to the “right” person; rightly so when you factor in a mother (Jenifer Lewis) who collects and discards husbands like the latest fashion in seasonal wardrobes. Montana just wants to get it right, and has come to equate this choice with becoming an adult.

Of course, when she decides to find a man and grow up, she does so in the most juvenile way possible. With the help of her two developmentally challenged co-workers and friends (Jill Scott and Adam Brody), she embarks on the journey to re-trace her steps, walking backward in order to step into the future. As soon as you read the words on the screen, it sounds doomed to fail, right?

Embracing Your Inner Goofball

But, if you’re going to fail, you might as well do it with style and a sense of grace, or better yet, a self-deprecating degree of gracelessness. Baggage Claim, almost right off the bat, reminded me of the similar-themed Anna Faris vehicle What’s Your Number? (2001) where she played an older sister confronting her own relationship mortality issues on the eve of the wedding of her younger sister (Ari Graynor). Faris’s Ally Darling sees herself as a slut because she’s bordering on an inappropriate number of hook-ups without actually landing a husband, so she sifts through the romantic wreckage, hoping to find her guy before she crosses that no-so magical scarlet number that will brand her forever.

Ally’s trip down memory lane is no less tiresome than Montana’s; in fact, its more annoying because you know from the start that her relationship spirit guide (Chris Evans) will be her eventual one and only, so you have to sit through the predictable slog of misguided mis-direction, simplistic complications, and the diabetic coma-inducing sweetness of watching Faris and Evans playing a game of Strip Horse in an empty professional arena (which only ever happens in cheesy movies).

The one saving grace of What’s Your Number? is the full-on goofiness of Faris who willingly throws herself into scene after scene of escalating embarrassments. Over the years, there have been a number of actresses considered to be the latest version of that classic Lucille Ball-styled ditzy comedienne (think Tea Leone, for example), but they tend to drift out of contention based on a simple reality. They are too pretty. No matter how willing they might be to pratfall and stutter their way through endless compromising positions, we, as an audience, aren’t ready and willing to embrace the notion of them devaluing their inherent beauty. We want to keep it, and them, on the pedestal.

Faris though is not that kind of beauty. She’s a guy’s girl, blond and shapely in the right places, but she always looks more comfortable in tomboy mode. She seems to breathe easier in sweatpants and tee-shirts with a beer in hand, just a moment away from burping after a big gulp. In Number, Ally makes these amazingly grotesque little figurines, capturing them in contemporary settings. It is nerd art and it fits her like a glove because she is a prettier version of one of these creations.

Nobody Does It Better

Baggage Claim lacks that degree of character, but I found myself rooting for Patton. Hers is a losing effort against overwhelming odds, but I couldn’t help admiring her willingness to project a bit of that goofball spirit that seems so natural to Faris. Patton is not tomboyish or graceless; she falls into that other category. She’s a more traditional beauty and she leads with this conventional attribute, wielding her looks like a gun with a hair trigger. Patton (and/or the directors she works with) doesn’t so much aim to stun or kill us with her attractiveness, we just get caught in the crossfire. To date, it hasn’t be an effective aspect of her performance arsenal, a fact that she needs to address quickly.

But there was something, hint at least, in Baggage Claim, of awareness that she needs to add a trick or two to her game. She invests Montana with a humorous desperation that it would be hard to imagine coming from Sanaa Lathan or Nia Long, two actresses that could have stepped into Montana’s shoes. Each has been the rom-com girl, in one form or another, but neither would dare debase their status as beauties, in pursuit of a man (or anything else). They miss the idea of comedy as an ingredient in the rom-com, while Patton seems open to the possibility. Her onscreen best friends – Scott and Brody – bear the burden of being surround-sound stereotypes, but each also embraces the broad physicality of the moment.

Maybe Patton should hook up with Faris in a Bridesmaids knockoff with Scott in tow as the would-be Melissa McCarthy supporting player. Not exactly a game changer, but it could provide a lesson in learning how to love the bomb.