Trust the Man

A smart, sharply observed, highly affable look at contemporary relationships that finally injects a little life in the stagnating genre.

Its strength is its humor, which is half-"Seinfeld" and half-"Sex in the City." There's a reason why those shows ran for only 30 minutes each - it's difficult to sustain comedic momentum for longer, as becomes apparent here.

Superficially entertaining romantic romp.

Trust the Man quickly begins to feel hopelessly derivative of other, better movies.

It's possible that a smart, insightful, sharp-edged comedy could have been written around these characters, but Trust The Man isn't it.

Ms. Moore is nicely lighted, but she too is poorly served by Mr. Freundlich's unfunny, unfocused screenplay, which basically stitches together a series of short scenes of four people whining in various combinations.

Writer-director Bart Freundlich (Moore's husband) has nothing to say and nowhere to go with this material, except to the most contrived ending this side of a "Will & Grace" episode.