Susan Granger’s review of “Killers” (Lionsgate)
Occasionally, a production company is so acutely aware that it’s stuck with a box-office dud that they refuse to schedule press screenings in advance, hoping the public will blindly buy tickets based on the names above the title – at least for the first weekend. This action comedy is just such a loser.
Writers Bob DeRosa and T.M. Griffith and director Robert Luketic (“The Ugly Truth,” “Monster-in-Law”) borrow liberally from Brad Pitt/Angelina Jolie’s “Mr. & Mrs. Smith” and Tom Cruise/Cameron Diaz’s upcoming “Knight and Day,” not to mention Arnold Schwarzenegger/Jamie Lee Curtis in “True Lies.” But any chemistry that might have – theoretically – existed between Katherine Heigl and Aston Kutcher fails to ignite.
Recently jilted, Maalox-munching Jen Kornfeldt (Heigl) is on the French Rivera with her intimidating, skeet-shooting father (Tom Selleck) and over-protective, alcoholic mother (Catherine O’Hara) when she bumps into hunky, shirtless Spencer Aimes (Kutcher) on the elevator. One thing leads to another and, three years later, they’re ‘happily married’ with a starter mansion in a gated community in suburbia. What gullible Jen doesn’t know is that Spencer’s been hiding his double identity, desperately trying to ditch his previous life as an international superspy/hitman. But soon after Spencer’s 30th birthday, they discover there’s a $20 million bounty on his head, transforming their so-called ‘neighbors’ into wannabe assassins with Spencer as their target. “I need you to go to the basement and get the duct tape,” he tells her. Instead, hysterical, perhaps-pregnant Jen gets in the line of fire. Yada, yada, yada.
So what went wrong, particularly when Katherine Heigl left TV’s popular “Grey’s Anatomy,” hoping to increase her presence on the big-screen after making such a hit in Judd Apatow’s “Knocked Up”? Certainly, no expense was spared. Costing more than $70 million, this is Lionsgate’s most extravagant production so far. Perhaps some of the blame lies with the clumsy, humorless execution, augmented by the boyish, smirking blandness of Twitter-king Ashton Kutcher in his capacity as executive producer.
On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Killers” is a D.O.A. 2. Bury it.
