'This Means War' review: The C-I-A took my baby away

This Means War/2012

Directed by: McG

Starring: Reese Witherspoon, Tom Hardy, Chris Pine, Chelsea Handler, and Angela Bassett

The Plot: Two CIA agents fall for the same girl at the same time. Their lives, their work, their battle against international arms dealers and the horrors of global Jihad are put on hold as the two handsome agents use the full force of the Central Intelligence Agency's man-power and technological might to bed Reese Witherspoon... which - as the bulk of the American male population can attest to - ain't such a bad way to spend our tax dollars.

The Film: This Means War is a film about pretty people entangled in pretty people problems. If the idea of one cute girl having to choose between two gorgeous men has you bethinking (which, funny enough, is a word believe it or not) of the time when Bella Swan bivouacked with Jacob and Edward on a frozen night in the Olympic mountain range, with only their inhuman love and powerful arms to keep her from certain disfigurement by the wretched claws of frostbite...

Think again muchachos.

In fact banish all thoughts of Twilight and accursed chick-flicks from your minds - This Means War is unusually good. It's poppy and cute, but it's also very, very funny. 

Reese Witherspoon's Lauren meets Hardy's very British Tuck through an online dating service. His best friend FDR Foster (Chris Pine - Christ, even these names scream The Young and the Restless) hangs back in a movie rental shop around the corner as Tuck's relief in case his buddy needs a way out of the date. He doesn't of course. The first date is a home-run. And when Lauren swings in to rent a movie on her way home she runs afoul of FDR.

While Tuck was shy, charming, and cute... FDR is cocky, talky, and handsome. Poor little Witherspoon can't help herself - soon she's the ham and cheese of a very thick, very sugary Monte Cristo sandwich.

Thanks to Chelsea Handler (Witherspoon's support system through her first menage a trois dalliance) and Chris Pine - both of whom have never met a scene they couldn't steal - This Means War shrugs off expected rom-com conventions and comfortable humor and jumps straight for the throat of being a legitimate adult comedy. For which it mostly succeeds - sometimes impeccably.

I doubt paintball wars and Gustav Klimt paintings have ever been this funny before.

McG (Terminator: Salvation, Charlie's Angels) sets his new romantic comedy solidly in the realm of fiction. Unlike McTiernan's Last Action Hero this film keeps both feet planted in the splashy, supernatural sound-stage of the Hollywood mirror-verse. Our three principles have jobs located in high-def pantheons of polished concrete and expensive technology. They live in homes that only exist on the silver screen. (swimming pool ceilings... pink champagne on ice) If the actual CIA offices were this foxy I can only imagine that water-boarding initiates would be given D. Porthault hand towels and a complimentary facial bidet after each interrogation. 

This Means War only stumbles when McG shifts the film into an ill-advised - and easily discarded - action/revenge fantasy with Chris Pine and Tom Hardy locking horns with a rich German baddie (Til Schweiger - Inglourious Basterds Sgt. Hugo Stiglitz) that does this story absolutely no favors and topples the ending of this once fun film into a clumsy, overwrought, plot-crunching mess.

For once the aphorism "Make Love, Not War" should have been headed.

This Means War didn't need a villain to keep things interesting. In fact... he just gets in the way of a perfectly groovy tussle between Hardy and Pine.  

The Verdict: Fun, funny, and relatively harmless, This Means War is the perfect receptacle for your transient Valentine's Day dollars. It's a product of Hollywood - meaning it's formulaic and irreparably cute - but when the jokes are on it isn't difficult to excuse the easy faces and story.

The final five minutes, however, are an absolute disaster. McG employs an undersized band-aid in an ill-fated attempt to patch up the considerable mess made by two Agency buddies chasing the same blond around Los Angeles. It doesn't quite kill the film, but it leaves it unconscious at a critical time in the narrative... the end.