Chaos Theory

Okay, you know that I'm not that into comedies - given my theory on tasteless vs. mindless a thousand times. Not one to sit still for much cute. Can't abide chick flicks - safe to say you will not see a review of The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants on this blog. It's a rare one that makes the cut... by virtue of originality, or just plain old silly, or sometimes, like this one, enough reality to bring the funny into pleasant contrast. Chaos Theory starts out like a traditionally mediocre comedy- ohmygod, saw that coming from last week sort of Disney bad - and then morphs into a meaningful, and sweet, little movie. Largely due to Ryan Reynolds.

If they don't lose you with the opening dumb pre-nuptial of his daughter mess, let's get to the real story ... it goes like this: Frank is an efficiency expert with a lovely wife, a beautiful daughter and a career about to take off when a series of highly unlikely, but seriously funny accidents lands him in the doghouse - lovely wife (Emily Mortimer) thinking he's been leading a double life complete with baby. In an effort to convince lovely wife of his fidelity, Frank learns that he is in fact sterile, and always has been, leaving lovely wife with some explaining to do.

What follows is some soul searching that is tenderly handled by Reynolds - his moment of falling apart will go down in my head as one of those rare moments of watching an actor cry so believably that I do too. Mortimer is equally adept at working with complicated emotion and her character is multidimensional and believable as well. Parts of Chaos Theory are predictable, parts are silly, some of it is deep and clear and true. A lot of it is really funny. See the website here.