Delayed Reaction: The Layover

The Pitch: Remember how Alexandra Daddario and Kate Upton weren't the best parts of other movies when they had supporting roles? Well, maybe they just needed to be leads.

Two friends get sidetracked on a vacation when they start fighting over the same guy.

This isn't a very good movie. I had no impression that it would be good. Frankly, I didn't expect to come away from this at all pleased with the movie. So, why did I see it? It helps that I like watching pretty people be funny. But that's an oversimplification. I was curious about William H. Macy as a director and why he chose to direct this. It made me wonder if something about it was lost in the trailer.

Really, I wanted to know if Daddario and Upton had any chops in comedy. Long story short, if they have any, it's not enough to lead a movie. Daddario has proven she has some talent in smaller doses. She's fine in Baywatch and When We First Met. You can tell she never cut her teeth in the Groundlings or UCB though. I still think she has potential. She just needs a director to discover a strength or two that she can lean on. I like that Kate Upton wants to be funny. Even in The Other Woman a few years ago you could tell that she was putting in more effort than the director was requiring. And I mean that as a good thing. She only needed to be beautiful in that. She wanted to be funny too. She's not very good in The Layover. Neither actress was helped by the material or the roles they were given. They aren't good enough to make a mediocre line funny. Not a lot of actors are. Daddario gets some OK physical comedy. Those are her best moments. The movie has no idea how to make Upton funny. At one point, she downs a 20 oz. Dr. Pepper, which to movie treats like it's some big feat. It's not. That's followed by her burping, which the movie treats like a hugely disgusting thing. Burps don't smell great, sure. They aren't farts though. They aren't as strong or as concentrated. They dissipate quickly. You can't use a burp for gross out humor.

I wanted a movie that I could leave on in the background without any risk of getting distracted by it. In that respect, The Layover is fine. It isn't very good though. I'm still kind of curious about seeing either lead in a more proper comedy (Daddario more than Upton), but they confirmed that they aren't ready to lead on their own yet.

The other actors were fine. The story is dumb. These best friends fighting over the same man never makes that much sense. He isn't really that interesting and they're supposed to be best friends. The best case scenario of this movie is The Sweetest Thing. This is far from The Sweetest Thing, and it makes you appreciate the cast of that movie more: Cameron Diaz, who learned what she could in many of the best comedies of the 90s; Christina Applegate, who has multi-camera, "filmed in front of a live studio audience" timing.

Verdict (?): Weakly Don't Recommend