8 recommendations

What Happens in Vegas

Editorial Review

Just last week, Made of Honour reminded everyone of how hard it is to make a romcom which presents new reasons for walking down the same old aisle. While McDreamy and Michelle Monaghan did their best, Made of Honour was such an uninspired My Best Friend's Wedding clone that no amount of nice chemistry could lift it above myeh.

Cut from the usual cloth, amiable and adequate What Happens in Vegas proves a better bet. Like 27 Dresses or Forgetting Sarah Marshall (yes, there is no shortage of troubled love in Hollywood), it steers just far enough from countless predecessors to keep your bile from bubbling over.

Cameron Diaz and Ashton Kutcher have done their time in romcoms, and they forge a fair bickersome/burgeoning partnership as strangers who marry after a drunken Vegas night. Over breakfast, they agree to divorce – but a $3million slot-machine jackpot plonks them in to an "only in the movies" marital version of Survivor. As uptight Diaz and slacker Kutcher do stuff to make the other leave, so that they can keep the millions to themselves, What Happens in Vegas puts easy money on sure things (sink urination; a party of temptresses) rather than attempt any long shots. Sidekicks Cordrry and Bell suggest subversive things that might have scored big if they were not confined to the edges.

Diaz and Kutcher – the latter refreshingly keeping the dude schtick on the down low – remain attractive centrepieces throughout, providing something to cling to as threads get barer towards the textbook final act. Still, both better know when to fold ‘em, because luck can only be tried so much.

Ben McEachen