by Karyn L. Beach

The Ex actually reminded me of a few of my exes. It started off with a lot of potential and then squandered it. In the end, like in real life, I was left disappointed.

Scrubs star Zach Braff stars as a chef named Tom who has a hard time holding on to a job. He gets fired from his most recent position at the worst possible time – on the same day that his wife, Sofia (Amanda Peet), is giving birth to their first child. The deal was that he’d support them while she, a successful lawyer, stayed at home with the baby.

Without a job or much of a back-up plan, Tom agrees to take his father-in-law (Charles Grodin) up on his long-standing offer to move to Ohio where he can get a job at his father-in-law’s ad agency. New to the ad game, Tom is assigned a mentor, Chip (Jason Bateman of Arrested Development fame). Chip is an old family friend and wheel-chair bound paraplegic, who once carried, and still carries, a torch for Sofia. Chip uses his ‘mentorship’ to undermine Tom at every turn. Yet, largely because he’s disabled, people fail to see how manipulative Chip really is.

The Ex started off well with some nice, broad physical comedy and a great food fight scene with Paul Rudd as a racist restaurant manager. Coming at the beginning of the movie that scene alone had me wanting more, but I just didn’t get it.

Poking fun at the handicapped Chip was supposed to make the comedy have more ‘edge’. There is the infamous scene (featured in the trailer) where Tom throws Chip down a flight of stairs to prove that he can really walk. Outside of that scene, the edge just isn’t there.

Sofia’s decision to stay at home with her child becomes a thinly-veiled statement against stay-at-home moms. The Ohio stay-at-homes are portrayed of being one suburb left of Stepford.

But the film’s real crime is that it’s filled with untapped comedic talent. Charles Gordin, Donal Logue, and Saturday Night Live cast members Amy Poehler and Fred Armisen are given very little to do. You see their faces and think “this is going to be funny.” And then it isn’t.

Honestly, I’ve never been impressed with Zach Braff and I wasn’t here either. He comes across more annoying than anything else to me. Amanda Peet isn’t much better in my book but in her defense, the reason she doesn’t do much here is because she hasn’t been given much to do. The only performance I truly enjoyed was Bateman’s. His Chip was both dark and sweet and manipulative all at once.

Like my aforementioned exes, there just isn’t enough here to justify sticking with The Ex. So like my exes, I’m going to have to drop this one.