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Life as We Know It
Metascore
39 out of 100

Generally unfavorable - based on 31 Critics

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 31
  2. Mixed: 17 out of 31
  3. Negative: 9 out of 31
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  1. The Globe and Mail (Toronto)
    Reviewed by: Rick Groen
    75
    The dialogue is an occasionally witty cut above the norm, partly because director Greg Berlanti goes easy on those cute baby reaction shots, but mainly because of something rather more valuable: screen chemistry.
  2. Boxoffice Magazine
    Reviewed by: Pete Hammond
    70
    The script, from first time screenwriters Ian Deitchman and Kristin Rusk Robinson, takes a predictable premise and gives it surprising depth.
  3. Chicago Tribune
    Reviewed by: Michael Phillips
    63
    The movie begins with a tragedy and eases into a more interesting blend of drama and comedy than we've gotten in this genre lately.
  4. USA Today
    Reviewed by: Claudia Puig
    63
    Predicating an escapist romantic comedy on a realistic tragedy requires a nimble touch at the helm. Perhaps if Life had been made by, say, James Brooks, it would have worked.
  5. Orlando Sentinel
    Reviewed by: Roger Moore
    63
    As uneven as it is, Life as We Know It still goes down like comic comfort food, especially for anybody who's ever dealt with parenthood.
  6. The Hollywood Reporter
    Reviewed by: Kirk Honeycutt
    60
    Although wholly predictable in its every beat and featuring bland, unremarkable WASPs as romantic leads, "Life" is not without its charms.
  7. Movieline
    Reviewed by: Michelle Orange
    60
    Despite these two actors' decent - and occasionally very charming - performances the film stacks the odds of the audience caring about Heigl and Duhamel against a narrative vacuum that favors eye candy and cheap effect over emotional logic.
  8. Arizona Republic
    Reviewed by: Kerry Lengel
    60
    Sarah Burns steals scenes as a seemingly prim social worker, and Melissa McCarthy (Sookie on "The Gilmore Girls") does the same as a pushy neighbor. The supporting cast serves up enough small moments of surprise to keep this formula flick from falling flat.
  9. Los Angeles Times
    Reviewed by: Betsy Sharkey
    60
    What you may not expect is quite how satisfying much of the film is, with Duhamel turning out to be a very good sparring partner for Heigl.
  10. Variety
    Reviewed by: Brian Lowry
    60
    It's a predictable date-night diversion.
  11. Christian Science Monitor
    Reviewed by: Peter Rainer
    58
    A more contrived and tenuous premise you would be hard-pressed to find, although, since this is a romantic comedy, suspension of disbelief comes with the territory.
  12. New York Post
    Reviewed by: Lou Lumenick
    50
    Possibly because Heigl is one of the producers, the most beautiful woman in the film -- the stunning Christina Hendricks of "Mad Men" -- dies in an off-screen car crash barely before the opening credits are over.
  13. Philadelphia Inquirer
    Reviewed by: Carrie Rickey
    50
    With pratfalls and teardrops, the film swings from sitcom to sit-dram.
  14. San Francisco Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Amy Biancolli
    50
    The movie's name is Life as We Know It, but that seems incomplete. The predicate's missing. The full sentence should be "Life as we know it is over," i.e., nuked by the sudden and irreversible arrival of a human infant.
  15. Boston Globe
    Reviewed by: Ty Burr
    50
    Life as We Know It gives bland and predictable a good name.
  16. The New York Times
    Reviewed by: Stephen Holden
    50
    It's enough to say that the bland romantic comedy Life as We Know It, in which there is not a single deviation from formula, is well made for its corporate type.
  17. The A.V. Club
    Reviewed by: Keith Phipps
    42
    Pity any poor kid stuck in a house like that. Pity, too, anyone who has to stop by for a visit.
  18. New York Daily News
    Reviewed by: Elizabeth Weitzman
    40
    The sisters who play Sophie are adorable. And if you happen to be a sleep-deprived parent yourself, there are worse ways to catch a two-hour nap.
  19. Time Out New York
    Reviewed by: Lisa Rosman
    40
    Brittle, workaholic and bitterly single does not a Kate Hepburn make, and in this latest screen iteration of The Taming of the Heigl, she doesn't stray far enough from her standard rom-com shtick.
  20. Austin Chronicle
    Reviewed by: Marjorie Baumgarten
    40
    It's the best date-night movie to hit the screens in a while, which, considering the competition, is very faint praise.
  21. Village Voice
    Reviewed by: Karina Longworth
    40
    The feminine fantasies Berlanti seemingly seeks to stoke are undercut by a vibe that's weirdly misogynistic.
  22. Chicago Reader
    Reviewed by: Andrea Gronvall
    40
    The movie relies on the notion that postponing sex heightens arousal, but its lovers aren't any better matched post-coitus than they were before.
  23. Chicago Sun-Times
    Reviewed by: Roger Ebert
    38
    So anyway, what happens in Life As We Know It? You'll never guess in a million years. Never.
  24. Miami Herald
    Reviewed by: Connie Ogle
    38
    Sometimes I suspect there is secret high-stakes contest in Hollywood among filmmakers to try and come up with a movie without a single original idea. If so, Life As We Know It is a contender.
  25. ReelViews
    Reviewed by: James Berardinelli
    38
    Cloying and at times annoying, Life as We Know It is egregiously manipulative, whoring itself out for a few unearned tears.
  26. Time
    Reviewed by: Richard Corliss
    30
    Another dreadful entry in the festering form of romantic comedy: the forced intimacy of two people who have nothing in common but hatred for each other.
  27. Washington Post
    Reviewed by: Michael O'Sullivan
    Oct 21, 2010
    25
    At nearly two hours, the movie feels bloated. It could easily lose 30 minutes, give or take, and live. It would still not, however, live up to its title.
  28. Tampa Bay Times
    Reviewed by: Steve Persall
    25
    A sitcom pilot idea stretched to feature length boredom.
  29. Wall Street Journal
    Reviewed by: Joe Morgenstern
    20
    The movie will surely find an audience, since it speaks to young people's anxieties about marriage and parenting. But what are two particularly engaging performers doing in a dump of a comedy like this?
  30. Entertainment Weekly
    Reviewed by: Lisa Schwarzbaum
    16
    There's something about Holly: She's the most ridiculous, irritating, two-dimensional rom-com heroine since...Katherine Heigl's last rom-com.
  31. Rolling Stone
    Reviewed by: Peter Travers
    12
    This is crap as we know it, a 113 minute package of romcom suck.
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User Reviews

All reviews »
User Score
5.4 out of 10

Mixed or average reviews- based on 37 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 5 out of 9
  2. Mixed: 2 out of 9
  3. Negative: 2 out of 9
  1. emmamazing
    6
    Better than average. Worse than I thought it would be. Two polar opposites stuck to raise a child. Together. After their mutual friends are killed in a car accident, they're the only option. What else happens is not only predictable, but almost inevitable. I hate to say this, because I love Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel, but the script is pretty run of the mill. While the relationship with the child is well-thought out, and though unoriginal, fun to watch, the relationship between Messer and Holly was too quick. You don't go on a date and fall in love. This isn't a Nicholas Sparks novel. Their relationship was too rushed. I'm not sure who to blame here - the writers or the director, for editing out good moments between the pairing. This is aimed at for hopeless romantics (myself included) so maybe it would've been smarter to focus a little more on the couple.… Full Review »
  2. Shiira
    2
    This review contains spoilers, click full review link to view. The rich are different, but not this different, not this cheeky. We can only hope that life doesn't imitate art, since romantic comedies as we know it, are growing more bizarre with each new entry in a dying genre whose modern-day practitioners have butchered so many hearts on celluloid, we stopped counting, and this latest entry, "Life as We Know It", is just one more rom-com that seems less concerned with the mysteries of love than the plot machinations which tears love apart before it even has a chance to coalesce. The rich can't be this twisted, can they? With friends like the Novaks(Hayes McArthur and Christina Hendricks), who needs any enemies? Messer(Josh Duchamel) and Holly(Katherine Heigl) have the worst friends ever, friends that on some level, must resent their single lives and the liberties that goes along with it, especially the liberty which retains them the right to pursue dreams, unencumbered by baggage. He wants to direct NBA basketball telecasts; she wants to expand her bakery into a restaurant, but after Peter and Alison, all too conveniently, die on cue, their baby, the baby of discontent, seemingly, throws a monkey wrench into the career trajectories of Sophie's legal guardians, who are probably the least qualified people for the job: two emotional idiots, too self-centered for child rearing, and too stupid to realize they've been "punk'd" from beyond the graves. Why don't they object more fervently to the conditions? Strangest of all, the Novaks have a stipulation in the will that Holly and Messer should live in their house with Sophie, like an arranged marriage, complete with child, which makes "Life as We Know It", a rom-com with accidental Indian undertones. If Heigl sang(as she performed "Bennie and the Jets" in Anne Fletcher's "27 Dresses"), then the film would have the makings of an accidental Bollywood musical. Doomed from the outset, the set-up, singles being so gung ho about moving in together with somebody else's baby, is so hard to accept, since their first date went so horribly wrong. It's not emotional blackmail, the need to fulfill dead friends' wishes, that keeps them together, it's the contrivances set forth by a narrative which isn't altogether different from John Landis' "Trading Places". Like Mortimer(Don Ameche) and Randolph Duke(Ralph Bellamy), who both allow somebody equally unqualified(a con-man named Billy Ray Valentine(Eddie Murphy), a financial naif) to take care of their business, their "baby", a wager must also have been the inspiration for Peter and Alison's idea to bestow full custody of Sophie to such incompetent parental candidates like Holly and Messer. Life, as "we" know it, real life, that is, not the diegetical life which sometimes breed convincing human simulacrum, but more often than not, plays as a backdrop for conceptual "people", would entail that some family member from the deceased pair step forward and claim the Novak baby. But "Life as We Know It" doesn't want anything to infringe on the supposed hilarious domestic hijinks of first-time parents, or the supposed heartbreak of first-time parents breaking up, and then the poignant reconciliation, again, at an airport, of first-time parents kissing.… Full Review »
  3. imho
    10
    I think the critics got it wrong. This movie is really charming, funny, entertaining, and surprisingly not overly sentimental for its tearjerker moments. Heigl and Duhamel are perfectly cast with no false notes. I think it's the best thing Heigl's done in film. The script is great, the direction is solid and even all the minor characters do a fantastic job. But the biggest surprise is Duhamel who is pitch perfect in the role. This is a pretty darn good film.… Full Review »
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