What happens when your best friends try to set you up? Probably nothing remotely close to what happens in this movie (NO SPOILERS), but the cast and crew do a great job of taking a close look at parenting from a variety of perspectives and through a comic overlay of the would-be romance between the wonderful co-stars. Here are these two very successful professionals, caught up in their own very different routines, confounded suddenly by the hardship of losing their friends, the reality that THEY are actually the best choices as guardians to young Sophie (NO SPOILERS). As most parents and guardians can tell you, no amount of prior training or experience can make you the perfect parent but things come around eventually if you share enough love and dedication to the young person/people in your care. My compliments to the writers and directors as well as to the cast and crew.

... I never have to see him again." Before the starting credits roll the introduction. A by their friends arranged blind date for Holly and Eric Messer that stops before it starts in Hollys small car. Both despise each other, angry that they agreed to this blind date. Not love at first sight, a movie title, but disdain at first sight: following the curve of Hollywood. The triad of forced togetherness, subtle interest, transformation to - what else: love. Predictable. Only the details are different. Always different? Not new either: a baby child is the reason of their warlike struggle. The child's parents die in a car accident and Holly and Eric are, without knowing it, as their friends will says, appointed to be Sophies guardians. For the child's sake they have to move into their house. Pure disgust that transforms according the credo of Hollywood to acceptance and, what else: eventually love. Can it be worse and bad as it starts. Hardly. The only way is not downward but the turn upwards. Eventually both realize not only to look but see each other what is behind. Not only look but see each other. Behind society, behind the family and our pretending: behind these obstacles is the real Holly and Eric. So much more interesting that love is as possibility possible. Did their friend know this, chosen them for their task? Of course had Sophie's parents not in mind their love affair. This they had to take care themselves.Why all these predictable films? We know what happens and how it ends, slightly different in each movie. Mirroring and recognized by looking. Seldom seeing us as we know what happens and how it ends. Hollywoods contract. The first date - disdain, not love at first sight. Then the working-through to come behind the fence where it is I myself. Then, when everything is done and the shining prince on his white horse is ready to come: the happy ending reward. After the 115 minutes we return to daily life. Some ten minutes before everything seems to go the wrong way with the stand-in-hero Sam (it is calculated: the last tension everything before the real happy end; he appeared before the starting credits.The title 'Life as we know it' is what the movie wants. Nothing special and predictable. The daily life for us and nothing else.

It is a given that all non-documentary movies require some suspension of disbelief. However, they are still required to meet some level of plausibility. This movie doesn't make it.The entire premise of the movie is that two people who can't stand each other would agree to take on the responsibility of raising a kid for parents who never bothered to tell them they were appointed as guardians. This is simply preposterous on too many levels for any rational human to accept. Maybe if this were sold as a fantasy, it might have a chance, but I doubt it would work.I bailed after the first half hour.

Holly Berenson (Katherine Heigl) is the owner of an Atlanta bakery. Eric Messer (Josh Duhamel) is a TV sports technician for the Atlanta Hawks. Their best friends Peter and Alison had set them up on a blind date but it went horribly wrong. When their friends die in a car accident, the two bickersons has to raise their baby girl together.It's not a new premise to force kids on single people. It's the go to premise for lots of gags. It's maybe the unoriginality of it all that devalues most of the comedy. It's been done before and by better comedians.Katherine Heigl and Josh Duhamel are reasonable romantic leads but this movie desperately needs a real comedian as one of the leads to do the jokes. It was not funny even before the deaths turned it heavy. As a romance, it worked well enough but as a comedy, it fails utterly.