At the Movies: 'Just Married'

By Christy Lemire
AP Entertainment Writer

"Just Married," a 20th Century Fox release, is rated PG-13 for sexual content, some crude humor and a brief drug reference. Running time: 95 minutes. Stars:

If you own a television, and if you've turned it on within the past month, you couldn't have avoided commercials for the movie, starring Ashton Kutcher and Brittany Murphy as socio-economically mismatched newlyweds who bicker incessantly on their honeymoon.

(The real-life off-screen couple has been everywhere lately, hosting the VH1 "Big in 2002 Awards" and MTV's "New Year's Eve Pajama Party" and appearing on every talk show in between.)

So you've had ample opportunity to see the movie's big jokes, all of which are of the slapstick or gross-out variety:

• Blue-collar, wannabe sportscaster Tom Leezak (Kutcher) meets cute with wealthy Wellesley art history major Sarah McNerney (Murphy) when he tags her in the head with a football on the beach.
• On their wedding night, Tom bangs Sarah's head against the threshold while carrying her into the honeymoon suite.
• Flying to Europe for their honeymoon, they get stuck in the bathroom while trying to join the mile-high club.
• At an historic French hotel, Tom tries to plug in an appliance — let's just say it's of the adult variety — and short-circuits the wiring. Later, at a run-down Italian hotel, he and Sarah crash through a wall and onto the bed next door, where another couple is having sex.

Sarah's ex-boyfriend, a generically wealthy pretty boy named Peter (Christian Kane), just happens to be in Europe at the same time, and wants to win her back. This sets up more obvious misunderstandings and fights, which involve 10-pound ashtrays and fireplace pokers.

By the end, they're so frustrated, they're purposely pummeling each other. But it's hard to believe that their characters would ever get together in the first place, much less get back together — and it's even harder to care. That's a problem, because that's the whole point of Sam Harper's script, which he based on his own horrific honeymoon.

It doesn't help that Shawn Levy directs with the same overbearing tone he used in last year's "Big Fat Liar," a movie remarkable only for rendering the adorable Frankie Muniz absolutely obnoxious.

Harper tries to infuse the movie with a kind of "Barefoot in the Park" sexual tension, but with none of the witty banter. While Murphy and Kutcher aren't exactly Jane Fonda and Robert Redford, they're likable enough — at least they are individually. Together, they're shrill and annoying.

Ripping more than a few pages from the "National Lampoon's European Vacation" script, Tom is always the ugly American, and the locals are depicted as singularly snooty and insulting.

Still, Murphy brings a natural charm to everything she does, from her voiceover work on the animated "King of the Hill" to her co-starring role as Eminem's girlfriend last year in "8 Mile." And when she's ranting in Italian, she bears a brief but striking resemblance to Federico Fellini's muse, Giulietta Masina, with her bleach-blond hair, tiny frame and enormous brown eyes.

Similarly, Kutcher has a comfortable goofiness that makes him easy to watch on the sitcom "That '70s Show." And I'll admit it, I even liked him in "Dude, Where's My Car?"

There's even a moment in "Just Married" that has the manic energy of "Dude, Where's My Car?" when Tom tries to ram the front gates of Sarah's family's mansion in his beat-up Dodge with his idiot best friend, Kyle (David Moscow), in the passenger seat.

It's enough to make you long for that movie — that's when you know the honeymoon is really over.