Someone Like You…

Directed by Tony Goldwyn, Someone Like You… follows Ashley Judd’s Jane Goodale as she embarks on a relationship with a married man (Greg Kinnear’s Ray Brown) but eventually finds herself falling for a cocky coworker (Hugh Jackman’s Eddie Alden). Filmmaker Goldwyn, working from a screenplay by Elizabeth Chandler, delivers a mostly watchable yet hopelessly generic romcom that benefits substantially from the charismatic work of its various performers, with Judd’s winning work here matched by a strong supporting cast that includes Marisa Tomei and Ellen Barkin (although there’s little doubt that Jackman’s nigh impossibly ingratiating turn remains an obvious and ongoing highlight within the proceedings). It’s fairly disappointing to note, then, that Chandler’s paint-by-numbers script emphasizes a somewhat sluggish storyline that contains few (if any) unexpected plot points, and there’s certainly never a point at which the viewer is wholeheartedly drawn into the protagonists’ predictable exploits (which, in turn, dulls the impact of the larger-than-life romantic finish). Still, Someone Like You…, based almost entirely on the chemistry between and charm of its actors, generally does manage to come off as a passable time-waster that could easily have been a whole lot worse.

**1/2 out of ****