The best thing, worst thing, and main thing about “Baggage Claim” in about the time it takes to watch the trailer.
REVIEW TEXT:
How wonderful it must be that every former boyfriend you’ve had is now rich and has the looks of a model.
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“Baggage Claim” is the story of a single woman who concocts a plan to make sure she gets proposed to by the day of her younger sisters wedding. Using the help of her friends at her airport job they instigate meetings with ex-boyfriends on airplanes, hoping that somehow lightning will strike. Yes, it’s just as preposterous as it sounds, and No I’m not going to have much good to say about it. But let’s at least try to find something positive before we list the negatives, shall we?
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How bout the message? The movie does eventually seem to make a valid point about how getting married isn’t as important as the marriage itself. As a husband of 18 years, It’s certainly a message that resonates with me and I’d even call it the best thing about the film. Unfortunately, they don’t trust the audience to get it from the movie itself, so they have the characters say it word for word several times just to hammer it home. There’s also a strange plot turn at the end, that in some ways undercuts the message it was just trying to impart. The only other positive I found is that lead actress Lauren London isn’t necessarily awful, which is more than could be said about most of those acting around her.
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Seriously, its really bad. At times I felt like I was watching an episode of Saturday Night Live where skit after skit just bombed. Some of this is due to the bad acting, some of it is due to the attempted comic relief, but most of it is due to the absolutely preposterous plot mechanics. Not to go into too much detail, but the plot relies on the ability of various employees of this airport being able to identify when our main gal’s ex boyfriends were flying in and out of town and make sure she was on those flights. It’s just silliness. Its not just that its crazy they would actually be flying in and out of town that much, but also that they would be able to be found, AND that she could somehow get on those flights too. Whatever. Even forgetting that, the movie is full of bad movie tells, like too much exposition through voice over, and characters who will talk to themselves so you know what is going on
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All of this together means “Baggage Claim” adds up to a movie that even though it might have something buried in there worth hearing, is almost impossible to invest in in any way, shape or form. I’m going with a D+.
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