I first came across Vince Vaughn in Swingers, the ‘96 LA comedy of dating manners, written by John Favreau. He played a fast-talking charmer with a coarse, juvenile streak. The character became his trademark, reappearing in more than a dozen big-budget Hollywood productions. We meet him again in The Dilemma, somewhat older, but none the wiser.

Vaughn plays Ronny Valentine, an engine company executive so unsuccessful that he has to ride in cabs to meetings. He’s more ambitious than that, as we gather when he complains about it to his best friend and colleague Nick Brannen (Kevin James). The film begins with a mindless dinner-table conversation about how well you can ever truly know someone. It proceeds to show Ronny catching Kevin’s wife with another guy and, boom, there’s your dilemma in question: What would you do if you caught your best friend’s spouse cheating on him? After consulting his hysterical sister and random strangers queuing at the bank, Ronny goes on a rampage of destruction, with un-hilarious results.

The obligatory, escalating crises materialise. Nick has stress-related ulcers in his stomach. Ronny considers proposing to his girlfriend, who’s been offered an exciting new job in Las Vegas but fears going there because of Ronny’s old gambling problem. Most importantly, Ronny and Nick have to deliver the pitch of their careers, which calls upon numerous U.S. sports metaphors regarding the 25-yard line and Kurt Russell’s locker room speech “from the movie Miracle”. OMG. To call the plot paper-thin would be an insult to paper. The concept is barely worth a sitcom episode.

I guess the film is a comedy, except there are no laughs. (I’ll admit to half-smiling once, when the rotund Nick compared love to a warm stew while rubbing his stomach.) For the most part, it feels like propaganda for a shiny, idiotic lifestyle. Look at the airbrushed poster for long enough and you’ll kinda know what I mean. The production values are slick, but the whole thing reeks of unpleasantness on every level. I’m not sure what director Ron Howard (Apollo 13, Frost/Nixon) was thinking. Awful.

 

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