The Ex

The Ex Every great once in a while there comes a comedy that’ll knock your socks off. Unfortunately, The Ex is more likely to put you to sleep, despite that extra-large latte you guzzled before the show. Unimaginative and uninteresting, the film Charles Grodin decided to come out of retirement for is one big yawn after another. It’s obvious that the writers—amateurs David Guion and Michael Handelman—couldn’t recognize nuance or, well, comedy, if it smacked ’em. Take Jason Bateman as an example. The Arrested Development star is by far the highlight of the film, but his character, the wheelchair-bound Chip, is reduced to cliché jokes involving his disability—including a lame scene in which he tricks Zach Braff’s Tom into playing wheelchair basketball with him. These cheap laughs pervade the film, which never even offers a good fight between the two men—Chip is the eponymous “ex” who wants Tom’s new-mommy wife, Sofia, back. Braff as Tom is basically J.D. on Scrubs, only without the quirks, and Amanda Peet is just plain boring as Sofia.