The Dilemma: Winona Ryder Is Up to No Good
Here's a trailer for the Vince Vaughn/Kevin James joint The Dilemma, about a dude (Vaughn) who discovers that the wife (Ryder) of his best friend/business partner (James) is cheating on him with Channing Tatum. To tell the friend or not?
That's the crux of this oddly sleazy-looking new comedy of ethics from Ron Howard. Poor Winona Ryder, trying to get some comeback momentum going — with a brief turn in Black Swan coming up and later this big Ron Howard movie — and she ends up playing the dirty cheating skeeze-skank or whatever they decide to call her. Knowing that this is a Vince Vaughn comedy and that he does, admirably, tend to shy away from extreme moralism, I'm sure Ryder's character will get to have her side of the story too, but still... It'd be nice to see Ryder charm again, instead of smearing herself in poop and yelling "Are you not entertained??" as she's going to do in this, and will do as a jealous ballerina in Swan, and has done in basically everything (she was a crazy, suicidal homewrecker recently in The Private Lives of Pippa Lee) that she's been in since Shopliftgate.
Otherwise this movie does look, yes, a little dark and dirty for a Ron Howard movie. Maybe this is the comedy analogue to his surprisingly grim Ransom? The gay bit at the beginning of this trailer is unfortunate, as is Queen Latifah saying "lady wood." Kevin James is just a great big whatever — perfectly likable but rarely very interesting. And what is Jennifer Connelly doing in this? I know living in New York the way she lives in New York isn't cheap, but isn't Paul Bettany doing enough shitty supernatural action pictures to allow her to be in the indie stuff she's so good at? Who knows. Movie careers are often mysteries.
And, yeah, Channing Tatum. Good for him, strawberry Charleston Chew turned into a human man by a witch's spell that he is.