Review: Baggage Claim (2013)

Cast: Paula Patton, Taye Diggs, Jill Scott
Director: David E. Talbert
Country: USA
Genre: Comedy
Official Website: Here

Editor’s Notes: Baggage Claim opens theatrically today, September 27th.

The genre of romantic comedy occupies this strange place of celebration and stigma. Audiences arrive in droves for the largely inoffensive fare. While there is always the odd outlier that both entertains and acts as a piece of cinematic quality, for the most part the genre is known for its absence of spectacularity. Fluttering through the multiplex, a paragon of the unmemorable, gone from our thoughts as quickly as it enters. Baggage Claim is a card carrying member of the rom-com guild, and embraces the genre tropes so fully as to border on parody.

Baggage Claim is a card carrying member of the rom-com guild, and embraces the genre tropes so fully as to border on parody.

Montana Moore (Paula Patton) is perpetually single. It isn’t that she doesn’t want to get married; an aggressive marriage-loving mother has instilled in her a devoted belief in the importance of a well-timed nuptial. When her younger sister excitedly announces her own engagement, the pressure is really on. Montana makes it her mission to find a man in time for her sister’s rehearsal dinner, a mere thirty-days away. What follows is a whirlwind of commutes, as Montana hops from plane to plane, and revisits her past relationships, all in the hopes of finally getting that ring.

Baggage Claim takes place from Thanksgiving to Christmas, yet here it is being released in the tail end of September. Hell, Thanksgiving isn’t even the closest holiday. In case you were unsure, that is not a good sign. Films like this are made to be released in late November and early December, capitalizing on travel commiseration and the consumption of mediocre movies that often results when families come together. Baggage Claim’s placement in late September is a dump, a signal that the studio isn’t confident enough in its ability to earn a dollar when viewers are even at their least discerning. There is an implication that the studio cannot see Baggage Claim besting any kind of real competition during the holiday season. Its release this weekend is the equivalent of a bag of last year’s candy corn in August; there’s not really any other holiday themed candy out there, so I guess I’ll confusedly eat it. Not that the move is unearned, since the film is forgettable, pedestrian and altogether derivative.

From the moment the film begins, with its rote voiceover and repetitive imagery, all signs point to the lesser side of its genre. This is not a treatise on romantic comedies as a whole. The genre has its place and when it is done well can, and has, resulted in a great many fantastically memorable films. Nevertheless, purveyors of it can become terribly lazy and resort to simply vomiting up the necessary plot points, simply filling space with buffoonery, witless gags and a kiss backed by a swelling score. Baggage Claim is an overindulgence of the genre’s go-tos, a paint-by-numbers of the awful rom-coms that came before it. Paula Patton, who is apparently doing much worse financially that we thought (otherwise, why would she be here), is lifeless in the role. She performs as if she were plucked from her local community theater, relying on overreactions to convey emotion and a prevailing, and out-of-place, sense of surprise. Although, when you compare her line-readings, because they are rarely more than just a reading, to the actual words exiting her mouth, she looks absolutely professional.

Let’s put aside the fact that every beat of the film, from the first, too-good-to-be-true dream guy to the final cross-airport sprint, is predictable to the extreme; instead let’s focus on the slothful choices that writer-director David E. Talbert made in between.

Let’s put aside the fact that every beat of the film, from the first, too-good-to-be-true dream guy to the final cross-airport sprint, is predictable to the extreme; instead let’s focus on the slothful choices that writer-director David E. Talbert made in between. Not only does Ms. Moore have a curvaceous and perpetually horny best friend, but she also has a stereotypically homosexual one; both with sass for days. On top of that, the one guy that we all know she will end up with at the end of the film is named William Wright. The character’s name is literally MR. RIGHT. Seriously. I’m not making this up. Talbert believes his audience to be so stupid that he spells out exactly what his protagonist is looking for, right in the character name. Pile on top of that the ugly nature of nearly all of the characters. The women are all weak and man obsessed. In her mind, Montana needs a man to be a lady, her sister is weak-willed enough to be bullied into marriage by her mother, her mother has a materially obsessed vision of love, and her best friend, Gail, is the anti-feminist’s vision of sexual liberation. The men are no better. Outside of the previously discussed Mr. Wright, they are a parade of weak-willed sycophants, misogynists, and personality black-holes.

I’d be willing to forgive some of the connect-the-dots moments if only the film were funny. Alas, it is not. You’ve heard most of the jokes before and will find yourself subconsciously filling in the punchlines before the actors even have the chance to. Outside of a well executed Coming to America reference that comes out of nowhere to land gracefully, the lines meant to inspire laughter are just as trite as the film’s premise. Baggage Claim is the reason many men blindly disregard romantic comedies. Every aspect is tired and the actors stopped caring well before the cameras started rolling. The characters act as if they are from some other world, and have just discovered the ways of this planet. Now if Baggage Claim were a film about some alien trying to discover the truths of the Earth-bound marriage, it might be more interesting; but as it stands, it is nothing more than a copy of a copy, having lost any distinguishing features in the chain of films it borrows from. The studio has shown that it clearly does not care about this film, and neither should you.

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Derek Deskins

Sr. Staff Film Critic

Derek was the only engineer at Northeastern University taking a class on German film and turning a sociology research paper into an examination of Scorsese’s work. Still living in Boston, MA, he blatantly abuses his Netflix account, but can never seem to get his Instant Queue below 200. He continues to fight the stigma that being good at math means you are not any no good at writing. I good write, very much.

Latest posts by Derek Deskins (see all)

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• Review: Baggage Claim (2013) - September 27, 2013
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