The Dilemma

True to its title, The Dilemma follows Ronny Valentine (Vince Vaughn) as he struggles to tell his best friend Nick (Kevin James) that his wife (Winona Ryder’s Geneva) is cheating on him – with problems ensuing as Ronny’s increasingly convoluted web of lies begins to threaten his relationship with Jennifer Connelly’s Beth. There’s little doubt that The Dilemma fares best in its opening half hour, as filmmaker Ron Howard, working from Allan Loeb’s screenplay, does a nice job of initially establishing the various characters and their relationships with one another – which effectively ensures that the movie’s leisurely pace is, at the outset, not as problematic as one might’ve feared. It’s only as the film progresses into its increasingly uneven midsection that one’s interest begins to wane, with the almost excessive familiarity of the storyline resulting in plot twists of a decidedly predictable variety (eg Connelly’s character begins to suspect that gambling addict Ronny is up to his old tricks). Howard’s curiously deliberate sensibilities inevitably wreak havoc on The Dilemma‘s momentum, as the director’s difficulties in sustaining a consistent tone ultimately ensure that the movie works neither as a comedy nor as a drama (eg it’s not funny enough for the former or emotional enough for the latter). The inclusion of a few admittedly energetic interludes – eg Ronny confronts Geneva’s tattooed, high-on-oxycontin boyfriend (Channing Tatum’s Zip) – goes a long way towards sustaining the film’s watchable atmosphere, yet it’s hard to deny that the whole thing is, in the final analysis, far too sedate and uneven to make a wholeheartedly positive impact on the viewer.

** out of ****