I haven't watched this in awhile. I probably bought this DVD back in 2005 when it came out, but I'm not sure that I've watched it more than once or twice since I bought it. I was rooting through my collection when I found this and decided that it was time to revisit… if for no other reason than to see Brad and Angelina before they get all old and weird looking. Well, for those of you who follow celebrities more closely than I do (which is probably most people, since I don't get too worked up about any of them, although I reserve the right to laugh at the tabloid articles about them), you might remember this as the straw that broke the camel's back. This is what ended Brad and Jennifer and brought together Brad and Angie. Personally, I don't know what went on, and I could care less. What matters to me is the movie.
One of my favorite things about this movie is the natural, easy-going chemistry that seems to flow between Brad and Angelina. I don't think either of them has ever had that same natural feeling when in a movie that's this highly charged with romance… which I suspect gave life to the media frenzy over the shenanigans that went down around the time this movie was released in theaters. But that chemistry seems to fly in the face of what we see these guys living like. Everything is beautiful, cold, and a bit sterile. There's little passion, little emotion, and few attempts at personality at their surrounds. I suspect this was intended to be a sort of "keeping up with the Joneses" effort to hide what was supposed to be actually going on, but I think they accomplished that upper-middle class tedium a bit too well. In real life, I don't know that these guys would have managed to maintain a relationship, with or without the chemistry. They did try to spice up the power-yuppie personae with occasional bursts of physical prowess no normal people would have been able to do, but it wasn't quite enough. If marriage is like that for everyone, count me out. I can be bored just fine by myself.
When the action (finally) heats up, Mr. & Mrs. Smith proves to be a near seamless blend of action and comedy. The sequences are well done, and the sniping comments between the Smiths as they fight for their lives are moderately funny. Plenty of other action comedies have done worse. Much worse. If the sequences have a problem, it's that they last for approximately a third of the movie. Even explosions get boring after twenty-five minutes. I suspect even living in Jerusalem's calmer than the end of this movie.
