MOVIE REVIEWS: THAT AWKWARD MOMENT

That Awkward Moment may have been shot in New York, but the New York film critics clearly don’t love it. Indeed, Stephen Holden in the New York Times describes it as “a vile, witless sex comedy set in contemporary Manhattan.” Rafer Guzmán in Newsday writes that the movie “tries to borrow some wit and charm from its Manhattan backdrop, but the more its characters talk about how special the place is, the more ordinary and irritating they sound. When a brokenhearted Jason cries into his beer, the obligatory barroom philosopher tells him, ‘Sometimes you win, sometimes New York wins.’ It sounds just like a line in a movie, and that’s the only reason it’s here.” Kyle Smith in the New York Post says that “the only conceivable point of debate” about the movie is “whether it’s the weepy displays of affection or the witless talk of ca-ca and pee-pees that is more excruciating.” And Joe Neumaier in the New York Daily News dismisses it as “eminently forgettable.” Among all the major newspaper critics, only one allows it a decent comment — Claudia Puig, in USA Today. Apparently she expects it to draw its core audience in a couple of weeks. “It’s a Valentine’s Day date movie that guys won’t mind seeing,” she writes, “and women will find amusing enough and easy on the eyes.”