There are some who regard most of the western world's mainstream entertainment productions as little more than an open sewer pouring recycled filth into minds around the world. These people are the ones who will enjoy Just Married the most as it supplies so much evidence to back up their theories.
Brittany Murphy and Ashton Kutcher play young newlyweds whose honeymoon in Europe becomes a holiday from hell which leaves them heading from the altar to the divorce courts faster than Jennifer Lopez and whatever beau she is currently devouring. However throughout all the bad feeling the film preaches a sickly one-dimensional moral messsage that sounds like the chorus of All You Need Is Love stuck on repeat for 90 minutes.
Just Married is an old National Lampoon's Vacation movie in all but name and cast, and you've never longed for Chevy Chase so much in your life. Whilst Murphy and Kutcher are competent leads neither stands a chance of energising such tired and weak material. It is unsurprising that the pair started dating during filming. Not that there is any hint of chemistry on screen, it is just that surviving a disaster of the scale of this film makes a strong shared to begina relationship with.
It is impossible to see what either of the characters sees in each other. Kutcher is such a meathead that he probably sneezes steak sandwiches and makes his role in Dude Where's My Car look like one of the great philosophical orations of the previous century whilst Murphy should have Pulp's "Common People" playing in the background everytime she enters a scene.
The film might have been funnier if all the illogically nauseating romantic fluff was substituted with the kind of vindictive pranks that form the half decent opening sequence. However the set piece gags are so tired that they are performed almost apologetically. Any movie whose most memorable moment involves a bride hitting her head on a doorframe when being carried across the threshold is in desperate trouble, as you must be if you have nothing better to do than watch Just Married.