{"id":1487,"date":"2024-08-02T03:07:44","date_gmt":"2024-08-02T03:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/?p=1487"},"modified":"2024-10-14T12:46:20","modified_gmt":"2024-10-14T16:46:20","slug":"the-dilemma","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/2024\/08\/02\/the-dilemma\/","title":{"rendered":"The Dilemma"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"The Dilemma <\/strong>(2011)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Comedy-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 111 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (mature thematic elements involving sexual content, language, some violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Ron Howard\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Allan Loeb\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Salvatore Totino\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 14, 2011 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, Jennifer Connelly, Winona Ryder, Channing Tatum, Queen Latifah, Amy Morton, Chelcie Ross, Eduardo N. Martinez, Rance Howard, Clint Howard.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Box Office: $48.4M (US)\/$69.7M (World)<\/p>\n

Rating<\/strong>: *<\/p>\n

\u00a0For a supposed comedy, The Dilemma<\/strong> is shockingly free of humor. I didn\u2019t laugh once. I didn\u2019t chuckle, chortle, snicker, titter or even smile. I sat there in stone silence as I witnessed a rare misfire from director Ron Howard, the same guy that made Night Shift, Gung Ho and Parenthood. One question kept running through my mind: \u201cWhere\u2019s the funny?\u201d I\u2019m still wondering.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Dilemma<\/strong> stars Vince Vaughn (Wedding Crashers) and Kevin James (Paul Blart: Mall Cop) as Ronny and Nick, longtime best buds and co-owners of a small auto design company. On the eve of a big business deal with Dodge, Ronny sees something he shouldn\u2019t. While looking for a place to propose to his girlfriend Beth (Connelly, A Beautiful Mind), he spots Nick\u2019s wife Geneva (Ryder, Heathers) kissing another man. He doesn\u2019t know what to do. Should he tell his friend about his cheating wife or stay out of it? His reticence leads to lies, lies and more lies. It also leads to Geneva threatening to reveal a secret about Ronny to Nick if he lets the cat out of the bag.<\/p>\n

\u00a0To his credit, Howard doesn\u2019t resort to mean-spiritedness or crass humor. Unfortunately, it doesn\u2019t make The Dilemma<\/strong> any better. It\u2019s obvious he\u2019s trying to make an adult-oriented seriocomedy about the nature of relationships. It fails because he can\u2019t decide between slapstick and seriousness. It results in a tonally inconsistent movie that works as neither comedy nor drama.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In the way of comedy, we get tired situations like Ronny hiding in a tree outside Geneva\u2019s lover\u2019s apartment in order to obtain photographic proof of her infidelity. The lover in question is a tattooed lunkhead named Zip (Tatum, Magic Mike). Any one of his tats has a higher IQ than him. Nick manages to get trapped on his balcony which leads to a physical altercation during which we discover how sensitive Zip is. His feelings are hurt when he thinks Nick is making fun of him. There\u2019s an even unfunnier bit involving an allergic reaction to poisonous plants. The side effects include an ugly rash and painful urination.\u00a0 Don\u2019t even get me started on the uncomfortably inappropriate toast about honesty Nick makes at an anniversary party. As for the drama, the lame attempts at humor undermine it at every turn.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Theoretically, a situation like the one depicted in The Dilemma<\/strong> could work. The right director, say the late Blake Edwards, could effectively mine it for laughs. Howard is not the right director. In his hands, the pacing and comic timing are both off by a wide margin. The movie is further hampered by a dialogue-heavy but underdeveloped screenplay from Allan Loeb (The Switch). It\u2019s an exercise in contradiction. The characters do a lot of talking, but don\u2019t actually say anything. Why? Because they\u2019re all idiots. It doesn\u2019t stop there. The Dilemma<\/strong> takes the notion of Idiot Plot (a plot where the conflict could be solved immediately by revealing a key piece of info) into the beyond by having the characters complicate things further by saying all the wrong things.<\/p>\n

\u00a0In general, the performances in The Dilemma<\/strong> are okay. The problem lies with the character likability factor. Some of the characters, especially Geneva, aren\u2019t likable. As much as I like Ryder as an actress, she plays somebody that I came to hate. Geneva, in addition to being a liar and a cheat, is selfish and narcissistic. It reached the point where I cringed every time her character appeared. Vaughn, in his usual overgrown frat boy persona, isn\u2019t much better. His character is a jerk. Although I sympathized with his predicament, he handles it poorly at every turn by constantly lying. They\u2019re stupid lies too. When Beth asks about his rash, he spins a wild tale about retrieving a lost ball for some overweight kids. What\u2019s worse is she doesn\u2019t call him on it right there and then. The Idiot Plot thickens.<\/p>\n

\u00a0Speaking of which, Connelly\u2019s character is the most unwritten of the bunch. She\u2019s barely a presence until the third act. James plays the only likable character in The Dilemma<\/strong> even if Nick is a dumb ass albeit a good-natured one. As for the pairing of Vaughn and James, there\u2019s no chemistry there. They don\u2019t play off of each other naturally; it feels forced.<\/p>\n

\u00a0The Dilemma<\/strong> is a bad movie, plain and simple. Given its pedigree, it should have been much better. It absolutely wastes a talented cast by dropping them into situations that were tired and stale 40 years ago. At 111 minutes, it\u2019s longer than it needs to be. In the end, it\u2019s a big bunch of nothing except two hours of your life you\u2019ll never get back.\"\"<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Dilemma (2011)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Universal\/Comedy-Drama\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 RT: 111 minutes\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Rated PG-13 (mature thematic elements involving sexual content, language, some violence)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Director: Ron Howard\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Screenplay: Allan Loeb\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Music: Hans Zimmer and Lorne Balfe\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cinematography: Salvatore Totino\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Release date: January 14, 2011 (US)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Cast: Vince Vaughn, Kevin James, Jennifer Connelly, Winona Ryder, Channing Tatum, Queen Latifah, Amy Morton, Chelcie […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":1794,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1487","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-comedies","category-this-sucks-so-bad"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/08\/The-Dilemma-PIC.jpg?fit=620%2C348&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1487"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2036,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1487\/revisions\/2036"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1487"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1487"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/movieguy247.com\/MovieGuy\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1487"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}