Life As We Know It – review

This romantic comedy has a long, unfunny build-up to a car crash in which a married couple are killed, leaving the victims' best male and female friends as the designated guardians of their one-year-old daughter. The woman, Holly (Katherine Heigl), is the fashion-conscious owner of a gourmet food boutique called Fraiche, the man, Eric (Josh Duhamel), is a slobbish director of sports programmes at an Atlanta TV station, and they purport to loathe each other. Their problems with nappies, baby food, minor illnesses, sleeplessness, cohabiting in the deceased couple's home, coping with work and so on are always predictable and rarely funny. To me, the chemistry going on between Heigl and Duhamel was about as exciting as that between Ann Widdecombe and Anton Du Beke.