Movie Review: 'The Dilemma'

When presented with a title as horrible as THE DILEMMA (all movies have conflict, but do we call those movies “The Conflict”?!), one could only have so much hope for the film. Throw in Kevin James and that hope slowly but surely disintegrates into nothingness. But being the lover of Vince Vaughn that I am, against all odds, some small shred of optimism still lingered. Sure, he delivers his lines the same way in all of his movies – he’s incredibly blunt, and speaks in that impossibly quick, rambling way that most have come to associate with him. But if you find that funny (which, admittedly, I do), then scenes with him in it can only be so bad. And trust me, if it weren’t for him, this would be awful. The dilemma the title poses is indeed a tough one: When Ronny (Vince Vaughn) finds out that his best friend and business partner Nick’s (Kevin James) wife is cheating on him, he doesn’t know what to do. Does he tell him, and not only deal with the “kill the messenger” backlash that will occur, but risk upsetting Nick to the point where they’ll lose a huge deal they’re in the middle of working on? Decisions decisions.

I’m not going to lie… I laughed out loud a few times. If you could get over the humor involving silly things like Ronny rolling around in poisonous plants, there are some moments that were definitely memorable, namely a scene involving a psychotic fight between Ronny and Zip (Channing Tatum), the man Nick’s wife is cheating with. You know how Tatum always plays that tough guy who mumbles a lot? I never would have guessed that he can do comedy, but lo and behold, he can. Then again, it might just be that most of the movie is so drab that when I saw a few precious sparks I started hallucinating comedy fireworks instead.


This is the kind of movie where, if the characters didn’t only (and I do truly mean only) make bad decisions, then the film could have lasted 45 minutes: he finds out that his best friends wife is cheating on him, acts like an adult and deals with it. But apparently there’s nothing funny about acting one’s age. However, there’s also nothing funny about running around in circles for two hours. Watching a dog chase its own tail is only amusing for about 10 seconds, at which point you realize nothing new is going to happen. So while it was not without its moments, after a while I just wanted to see some damn progress in the story already. THE DILEMMA focuses so strongly on the conflict, and so little on the resolution, that when the last 10 minutes of the movie arrived you could practically see the filmmakers and actors frantically scrambling around to tie the film in a nice little bow and send us on our way, and by that point, I was more than content to say goodbye.

Rating: C