Paula Patton has two, maybe three expressions. Having to review Paula Patton and Adam Scott vehicles in the same week is just cruel. Paula’s bread and butter move is: “Oh, surprise!” This comes in handy in an idiot plot romcom. She can use it indefinitely, and does. Wow, I paid $$ to see Paula Patton do her surprise face 74 times. What a bargain.
Baggage Claim is among the worst ideas put to film this year – taunted by an oppressive mother to find a husband fast, a flight attendant (Patton) uses illegal means to track down former lovers traveling for the holidays and hooking up just in case one blossomed into a cactus. What’s the Larry Miller joke? Ah, yes, “I don’t understand couples who break up and get back together. That’s like pouring milk on a bowl of cereal, tasting it, and saying, ‘This milk is sour. Well, I’ll put it back in the refrigerator; maybe it will be okay tomorrow.’ “ Can’t really stress enough that not only is this a really bad idea, it’s also a really illegal idea. Using your connections to influence flight records? I’m sure the TSA has eased considerably about that offense, right?
I suppose I need to back up. Montana Moore is a big city single girl. The big city is Baltimore, but that’s not her fault. She’s invited to Chicago for Thanksgiving by her steady, Graham (Boris Kodjoe), and given circumstance, she thinks there’s a ring around this offer. It’s apparently 75 degrees out which explains the lack of coats when they go out boating. In late November. At dusk. On Lake Michigan. When Graham drops her off at a hotel citing the need for home privacy to prepare for a business trip, Montana is encouraged by standard set of intrusive romcom friends: overweight sex addict Gail (Jill Scott) and homosexual cat fighter Sam (Adam Brody) to be suspicious. So she goes to Graham’s house, again in the unusually balmy Chicago Thanksgiving, and lurks outside like a maladroit 
prowler until discovering he’s married with a child on the way (guttural emanation of some kind here). Go ahead, count the wrongs. This is the kind of scene so common in film and so bogus in real life. What asshole invites his unaware mistress to his home town for Thanksgiving only to blow her off? And who is this for?
This tribute to bad cliché sets up the real plot of Montana traipsing the country prostituting herself? Trolling for a ring? Not sure there’s a polite or even kind way of putting that. Then men she attracts are all horrible in one way or another, and, oh, by the way, we know who she’s going to end up with five minutes into the film. The real problem with Baggage Claim isn’t that it’s different from any number of other stupid “feel-sorry-for-me” “romantic” “comedies.” The real problem is that Paula Patton doesn’t sell “feel-sorry-for-me” well. We gotta believe you’ve been wronged, babe. Without that, it’s a monumental struggle to define the audience who would find your behavior reasonable or mildly entertaining. I hope that wasn’t what you were going for.
♪There’s just no plan like beau for the holidays
‘Cause no matter the rocks you unturn
If you want to make mom happy all her days
Make it’s cliché that you churn♫
Rated PG-13, 96 Minutes
D: David E. Talbert
W: David E. Talbert
Genre: The things we do for … image
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Meg Ryan, if only to note her stupid romcoms were better
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: TSA Agents
♪Parody inspired by “Home for the Holidays”
