Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!

Directed by Robert Luketic, Win a Date with Tad Hamilton! follows small-town cashier Rosalee Futch (Kate Bosworth) as she begins seeing a famous Hollywood star (Josh Duhamel’s Tad Hamilton) after winning a contest – with complications ensuing after Rosalee’s boss (Topher Grace’s Pete) finally works up the courage to profess his love for her. Filmmaker Luketic, armed with Victor Levin’s screenplay, delivers a briskly-paced romantic comedy that fares best in its thoroughly entertaining and compulsively watchable first half, as Luketic does an effective job of establishing the affable central characters and the decidedly over-the-top scenario in which they find themselves – with the agreeable atmosphere perpetuated and heightened by the efforts of a uniformly appealing roster of performers. (Bosworth, Grace, and Duhamel’s completely charismatic work here is undoubtedly matched by a superb supporting cast that includes Nathan Lane, Gary Cole, and Kathryn Hahn.) It’s clear, then, that Win a Date with Tad Hamilton!‘s overall impact is affected by the less-than-satisfying treatment of the expected love triangle (ie the viewer is, given Pete’s relentlessly cynical and sarcastic attitude, forced to root for Rosalee and Tad’s successful coupling), while the needlessly protracted third act ultimately does ensure that the whole thing peters out before arriving at its relatively romantic finale – which does, in the end, cement the picture’s place as a decent-enough romcom that’s perhaps not quite as consistently engaging as one might’ve hoped.

**1/2 out of ****