After being cut from the USA softball team and feeling a bit past her prime, Lisa finds herself evaluating her life and in the middle of a love triangle, as a corporate guy in crisis competes with her current, baseball-playing beau.
How Do You Know isn't Brooks' best. Witherspoon is too uneasy in her role. But thanks to Rudd, plus Kathryn Hahn as... George's loyal secretary and Nicholson as his father, it delivers a number of delights.
Jeff Beck
Examiner.com
September 22, 2012
"How Do You Know" is a complete misfire from famed writer/director James L. Brooks.
Brooks has given us the rare contemporary rom-com that's by turns (if intermittently) thoughtful and funny, and that doesn't feel focus-grouped, cynical, misogynist, or mean. It seems ungenerous not to cut such a generous movie a break.
How do you know if a romantic comedy isn't working? Generally if it's neither especially romantic, nor particularly comic. And in this picture, no matter how many times he keeps coming up to bat, Brooks keeps striking out.
What makes any of these kinds of movies run involves the appeal of the main actors, and all three, stalwart in their screen likabilities, smooth the proceedings.
Some of the bits are funny, every now and then they're sweet, the performances are OK and really, with this much talent involved, it's hard not to be disappointed in that.