Movie Review: Killers

"Article first published as Movie Review: Killers on Blogcritics.org."

Director Robert Luketic rejoins his The Ugly Truth leading lady, Katherine Heigl, in this romantic comedy that tries really hard to be a Mr. & Mrs. Smith but misses the point.

Jen (Katherine Heigl) is a recently single young woman who is traveling on vacation to the south of France with her parents (Catherine O’Hara and Tom Selleck). There she meets Spencer (Ashton Kutcher) and here we get the same old story once again: Boy meets girl, boy takes girl on a date, they fall in love, they quickly get married and have a quiet and lovely life in a suburban area.

However, everything takes a turn when Jen discovers that her husband is not the man she thought he was but a former CIA hitman and her neighbors are not charming and kind people who have embraced them in the neighborhood but assassins hired to kill her and especially her husband. How would you react in such situation?

At first, you may think that Jen and Spencer are the perfect match because they complement each other. He is used to living life on the edge but looks forward to having a normal and quiet life and she is “tired” of her secure life and her overprotective parents and looks forward to a more spontaneous and edgy life. Both characters live both lives during the movie but what fails is their chemistry. Heigl and Kutcher are cute together, they try really hard to be credible, but they don’t have a sparkling chemistry, which is why you feel there’s something off about them. If you were expecting an explosive chemistry like the one Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had in Mr. & Mrs. Smith, I’m sorry, you won’t find it here.

You will laugh at some situations and dialog (most of the time uttered by Jen's parents) but the movie is not hilarious, jokes could have been way better written, and it's not action-packed. Kutcher and Heigl are two regulars in romantic comedies but the promising career that Knocked Up seemed to predict for Heigl may be a bit stuck. I really think she needs to look for more powerful roles if she wants to become the new romcom queen or look for a good drama - she got quite nice dramatic material in Grey's Anatomy pre- season six. Choosing good material is the key.

Fans of Kutcher and Heigl, go see this movie if you want but don't expect too much of it. It's your choice now.