The Object of my Affection

Based on a book by Stephen McCauley, The Object of my Affection follows Jennifer Aniston’s Nina Borowski as she finds herself falling for gay roommate George Hanson (Paul Rudd) and eventually asks him to help raise her unborn child. There’s ultimately little doubt that The Object of my Affection fares best in its entertaining and compulsively watchable first half, as filmmaker Nicholas Hytner, working from Wendy Wasserstein’s script, does an effective job of establishing the affable central characters and the myriad of quirky figures surrounding them – with Aniston and Rudd’s personable work here matched by an eclectic supporting cast that includes Alan Alda, Allison Janney, Tim Daly, and Steve Zahn. And although the situations in which the protagonists find themselves are rather sitcom-like in their familiarity, The Object of my Affection manages to sustain its pleasant atmosphere right up until around the halfway mark – with the movie, beyond that point, slowly-but-surely transforming into an egregiously (and excessively) generic effort suffused with the worst conventions that the romcom genre has to offer (including, but not limited to, the dreaded fake break-up). The conclusion is, as a result, unable to pack the emotional, feel-good punch that Hytner has clearly intended, which ultimately does secure The Object of my Affection‘s place as a decent 80 minute romantic comedy trapped within a needlessly bloated misfire.

** out of ****