Is that it reinforced a feeling I’ve had for a while that Brandon Routh should go the James Marsden route, and seek out fun, meaty, slightly wacky supporting roles. He was totally fine in Superman Returns (where Marsden has a nice supporting turn), but he’s much more memorable as a shy gay porn star in Zack and Miri Make a Porno, and playing a nice foil to a rather outre Justin Long:

And he’s really quite, quite good as Todd, Ramona’s empty-headed vegan ex-boyfriend in Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (see around 1:30 for the shiny levitation):

Guys that good-looking often don’t have to be funny. But just like someone like Anna Faris would probably never work if she was just another blonde, I can imagine that a dude like Routh might want a skill set that lets him play off his stunning physical assets, rather than getting trapped by them. In acting, as in life, the idea of being Jon Hamm’s 30 Rock character is actually pretty terrifying.

One of the things that I think is very interesting about Jason Bateman’s career (and I will stipulate that I haven’t seen Arrested Development) is that the characters he plays are frequently only slightly above average. He’s the head of a company in Up In the Air, but not a particularly famous or important company. He’s the head of a small business in Extract. He’s an agent, but a hustling one, in Hancock. He’s doing fine, but isn’t much of a person in the State of Play remake. He’s professionally successful, but unsatisfied in Juno. I note this because in this day and age of moviemaking, it’s rare that an actor will get this much work without playing someone exceptional at some point, be he CEO, or professional athlete, or famous lawyer, or some sort of fictional actor, or badass-about-town. I think the fact that Bateman’s picked characters who aren’t consumed by their exceptionalness actually means that he takes roles where there’s more to want, and more to achieve. Or where jobs don’t matter at all, as they don’t seem to for him in The Switch:

It’s unusual, and actually kind of nice to have a movie where the dude is solely focused on the relationship, or in this case, relationships. I don’t think this’ll be anything extraordinary, but it certainly looks like it might be reasonably pleasant. And it exists in the realm of adults who have made compromises, where Bateman’s done fine work before. At least in this one, he won’t be trying to have an affair with a teenaged surrogate, so I find his character more likable and relatable already, and I already feel a certain basic warmth towards the guy even when he’s in sleaze mode!

About the trailer for How Do You Know is finding out that Herc got out of the security business and made it into the major leagues down the road in Washington, DC:

That said, this looks reasonably charming, but I’m somewhat annoyed that this is a movie that purports to be about a woman who questions the whole Girl Life Plan of finding a dude and popping out some kids, but that is actually about the way that she ends up doing the first half of that equation. I’ll also be curious to see if the fact that Witherspoon’s character is a pro softball player actually matters in the movie, perhaps in drawing her closer to Owen Wilson’s character or something, instead of simply being the quirky profession she is assigned to because they didn’t want to make her a journalist or a lawyer or something generic that indicates that she’s sharp. I don’t necessarily love movies that try so hard to be unique that they tip over into a murk of quirk, but I don’t like movies that try to be unique and are deeply, depressingly, obviously conventional anyway either.

I mused on why the juxtaposition trend in the current generation of parody movies causes them to trend towards the ridiculous.