The place is the sameโa pocket of New Yorkโand the math is identical. Six long-standing pals: three women, three of the opposite flavor. Finally, the odd coupleโpeas in a pod, but never an item, preferring to try other pods and sleep with hotter peas. Such is the companionship of Jason Adam Scott and Julie Jennifer Westfeldt , who live in the same building, get the same jokes, and adore each other so much that, without actually wanting to be together, they decide to have a baby.
Imagine Phoebe conceiving with Joey. Before you know it, the days are accomplished that Julie should be delivered. And she brings forth her firstborn son, and wraps him in cute slings, and shares him in joint custody with Jason, because there is no room for them in the conventional.
And thus the movie dives, head first, into the melee of motives and lunging social experiments that now constitute the world of romantic comedy. Got that? If it was tough for the characters to follow their hearts, just think of what it was like for the poor sperm, who were left chasing their own tails. Thus, when Jason, in the park with his son, meets Mary Jane Megan Fox , out for a stroll with a dog, he is not only tempted but allowed, under the terms of his non-marriage, to hit on her.
On Fox, that is, not the dog. This film is her baby, and her theme, like her character, could not be more fertile, though she is hardly the first to till it; think of screwball comedy, and the endlessly rising sap of desire that bred all that marrying, peeling apart, and marrying again.
Julie and Jason make sport of anyone who is forced to move to Brooklyn, but that truly does mark their horizon; brief ski trips aside, the movie locks us into a landscape of pleasantly salaried white professionals, whose careers which are seldom identified afford them the luxury to muse and prattle about nothing but relationships. Any parents who see this movie should be warned about the final score: Friends 6, Kids 0.
