Review: ‘Baggage Claim’ is best left at the lost and found
Montana Moore (Paula Patton) has baggage. You see, the beautiful, intelligent, jet-setting flight attendant is (gasp!) single, and when her younger (younger!) sister announces her engagement, she decides there’s no way she’s going to that wedding without a husband, or at least a fiancé, of her own. But with the nuptials just 30 days away, Montana’s chances of finding a new man are slim, so her gay and sassy (respectively) BFFs Sam and Gail (Adam Brody and Jill Scott) devise a scheme to use their connections at the airline to get Montana on the same flights as her exes to see if she can accidentally/on-purpose rekindle the romance.
Written and directed by playwright David E. Talbert based on his novel, “Baggage Claim†promotes painfully outdated social mores. To the script’s credit, Gail admonishes, “It’s the 21st century. You don’t need a man to define you.†(Thank you!) And Montana does balk at one suitor’s attempts to control her. But overall, she bats down the feminist argument in favor of old-fashioned romantic notions about love and marriage.
Patton is sweetly game, when she’s not clopping through airports scrambling to make her next manufactured meet-cute. And Brody and Scott have a fun, funny chemistry that provokes chuckles despite oneself. But for a chick flick that meets the first two criteria of the Bechdel Test (it has at least two women who talk to each other), “Baggage Claim†fails the third (about something besides a man) big time.
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“Baggage Claimâ€
MPAA rating: PG-13 for sexual content and some language
Running time: 1 hour, 37 minutes
Playing: In general release
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