'Just Married' an endearing romantic tale
By Chris Hewitt
Knight Ridder Newspapers
Jan. 10, 2003

Film companies routinely pair a couple of young stars (Kirsten Dunst or Julia Stiles or Rachael Leigh Cook with Freddie Prinze Jr. or Freddie Prinze Jr. or Freddie Prinze Jr.), give everybody a gross-out joke, toss a chart-busting song or two on the soundtrack and call it a movie. So the first sign that Just Married will be different is that it has an actual musical score.

True, the score rips off American Beauty New Agey vibraphone stuff that would be perfect to get a pedicure by but the effort to provide emotional counterpoint to the story, instead of just lining up the latest from N.E.R.D. and Norah Jones, suggests Just Married is trying harder than the Prinze stink bombs, and that it might be better. Which it is.

Sarah (Brittany Murphy, with a naughty edge, as if shes enjoying a pornographic joke) and Tom (Ashton Kutcher, whos too amused by himself) are Just Married. The movie begins as they return from their disastrous honeymoon on the verge of breakup, then backtracks to show how they got together, then cuts to the romantic finale.

All romantic comedies take the same path flirting, kissing, fighting, Im-sorrying, forevering but the best ones brighten up the route with genuine wit (Four Weddings and a Funeral), vivid characters (The Palm Beach Story) or likable actors (My Best Friends Wedding). Just Married has dabs of those things, but its real asset is genuine interest in what makes love work.

Unlike most romantic comedies, which stop at the point when a relationship is about to get hard, Just Married plows right through the fights and revelations. As things crash into Sarah and Tom or explode all around them on their honeymoon, Just Married finds a way to make their torment funny (if comedy equals tragedy plus time, this is more like tragedy plus disaster multiplied by misery), while also letting them learn more about each other. We see the bad times in their relationship, and, if they can get through them, we know it will get better and stronger.

The bad times also make the movie better and stronger. As we see the couple realizing theyre too tired to have sex on their wedding night, coping with a French rental car the size of a 12-pack of toilet paper or figuring out how to forgive each other, we begin to believe that these two are in love. And that Just Married is a rare romantic comedy thats actually romantic and comic.

"Just Married"

Starring: Brittany Murphy, Ashton Kutcher
Playing: Now playing throughout the Valley
Rating: PG-13 (sexual content, some crude humor, a brief drug reference)
Running time: 1 hour, 35 minutes
Grade: B