Director Griffin Dunne managed to take the stereotypical how-to-make-a-romantic-comedy recipe and douse it with twice as much sugar than what was needed. And the end result was a less than mediocre movie.While stories are usually sappy and predictable in romantic comedies, then the story in "The Accidental Husband" was just ludicrous. The concept idea of the story was just so far out there and unrealistic that it was more of a farce than an actual romantic comedy.And throughout the entire movie there was just something missing from the recipe, and it was dragging the movie down. It felt as if even the actors and actresses themselves weren't buying into the storyline. So why should the audience?Uma Thurman and Jeffrey Dean Morgan did good jobs with their acting, but there wasn't any particular chemistry between them on the screen. And it was a shame that Colin Firth didn't have a bigger role in the movie.If you enjoy romantic comedies, then there are far better movies available than "The Accidental Husband".

This movie is an unexpected find. After reading some of the other reviews for this, mostly negative, I wondered what I might be getting myself into in watching it. In fact it is a charming romantic comedy. Yes this kind of thing has been done many times before, but that doesn't mean it can't succeed another time. And this one does succeed.The script is witty and light and the acting is just beautiful, especially Uma Thurman who absolutely sparkles as Emma, who thinks she knows all there is to know about romantic relationships and is about to be married to Richard, played by Colin Firth when Patrick, played by Jeffrey Dean Morgan enters her life claiming that he is her husband, which leads to massive complications in Emma's life.Thurman and Morgan have excellent chemistry and are definitely believable together. And I really loved this movie and would highly recommend it to anybody who wants to see a good old fashioned romantic comedy set in modern day.

I watched this film because of the cast and director. How bad could it be. Colin Firth, Sam Shepard, Isabella Rossellini, Uma Thurman and Kier Dullea. It was so bad that I was going to turn it off. Everything is bad about this film. The acting of Dean Morgan Jeffrey (whatever his name it or who he is), Uma Thurman, Colin Firth. The direction of Griffin Dunne - horrible. The music - bad, Colin Firth suits - looks like they come from KMart (sorry for the insult KMart). Just skip this. An atrocity. Finally, who would chose the creepy fireman over Colin Firth? I was embarrassed for the actors and myself to watch them say the lines they were given to read. I hope the actors got their payday and that I didn't pay to watch this in a theater. I would have demanded a refund. That bad and not exaggeration.

This movie was written by three women who can't possibly have ever had a single date amongst them. These virgin scribes don't write female characters well or male characters or young people or Caucasians or Indians or parents or children or…well, basically any variation of humanity that appears in this movie bears as much resemblance to actual people as I do to Bo Derek. Celibate monks and nuns who have never seen a member of the opposite sex could come up with a story that more closely mirrors human romance than The Accidental Husband. The entire production and everything in it is so fake and artificial that the entire cast could have been replaced by those little Playskool figures that are just plastic bodies and heads, with all the dialog voiced by really depressed Doberman Pinchers, and it wouldn't have made any difference.And don't think it is only the writing that's horrid. The invincible Britishness of Colin Firth carries him through and Ajay Naidu plays "funny ethnic stereotype" for all he's worth, but Uma Thurman and Jeffrey Dean Morgan are appalling. True, this screenplay requires them to do and say things that no one would ever do or say, but I don't think director Griffin Dunne instructed them to play their characters like they were reincarnated game show hosts from the 1970s. Sam Shepard wanders through the film like he showed up on the set expecting to do the voice over for a car commercial. The rest of the supporting characters might as well be reading off cue cards.The Accidental Husband is about Doctor Emma Lloyd (Uma Thurman), a relationship expert with her own radio show and a new book coming out. After she talks a woman into calling off her marriage to firefighter Patrick Sullivan (Jeffrey Dean Morgan), he decides to get even by having an Indian teenage hacker make Emma and Patrick officially married in the computer records of New York State. That interferes with Emma's plans to marry the eternally safe Richard Bratton (Colin Firth) and leads to a string of ever more implausible lies and astonishingly unconvincing scenes of growing attraction between Patrick and Emma.Because this is one of those motion pictures that are so resolutely horrible I could write a review 10,000 words long and still not cover each and every example of how it sucks, I'll just stick to one thing that I believe perfectly embodies how stupendously inept it is. The Accidental Husband is a love story, like many others, about people who discover they're meant to be together and must overcome obstacles in order to unite at the end and live happily ever after. Except at this conclusion where Emma and Richard are joined in love, the last scene of the two has them contentedly separated by a glass wall. They can see and talk to each other, but they can't touch. Now, when a love story ends with the lovers kept apart like that, there should be a point to it. Whether it's thematic or psychological or subtextual or referential, if your love story is going to finish with your lovers standing in a room with a glass wall between them, THERE SHOULD BE SOME SORT OF FRIGGIN' SIGNIFICANCE TO IT. As you may have guessed, there is no significance to such an ending here. It doesn't mean anything except "The people who wrote this film don't know what the bleep they're doing".Unless the most intimate relationship you've ever had in your life was with an inflatable sex doll, avoid watching The Accidental Husband. It's that bad.