It's the kind of movie I hate with every fiber of my being: overwritten in a self-congratulatory way, talky with nobody saying anything interesting or substantial, whiny, preposterous in every detail -- not a single word or action bears any resemblance to anything that has ever happened on planet Earth -- profoundly unfunny, overstuffed with sketched-out characters but lacking a single one to care for, much less like or root for, replete with undertalented actors and a couple of talented ones all mugging their way through (why bother being human when the script is SO false?), predictable whenever it thinks it's taking a chance, trite when it thinks it's being original. It takes place entirely in Movieland -- that it gets its Manhattan geography all wrong on Ira's opening-credits walk through the city was the first clue -- and succeeds almost uncannily at producing the opposite of the desired reaction in every scene: when the filmmakers aimed for sweetness and romance, they instead delivered crassness and vulgarity; when they aimed for Woody Allen-style neuroticism, they found only snarkiness and endless therapist clichés; when they aimed for laughs, they got only stone faces from my audience. It's this year's equivalent of 2001's "All Over the Guy," with Judith Light in the Andrea Martin role. Avoid it like the plague.
Review of Ira & Abby
