Baggage Claim (2013)

Baggage Claim review by George Hooper - Cinema Paradiso

Baggage Claim, much like Think Like A Man is one of a series of features designed as both a light hearted romantic comedy as well as a film designed to play to a black audience. The problem isn’t that the film was created to play to a certain group of people, its that as a comedy, it’s dull, borderline nonsensical and unbelievably sexist for almost its entire run time.

The film follows air hostess Montana (Paula Patton), a serial dater who hasn’t been able to find the right guy. When she finds out her sister is getting married she sets out to find a man before the wedding as she looks back through her ex boyfriends to try and find someone to take and hopefully keep. However her life is complicated by her friendship with William (Derek Luke), someone who has a problem with Montana’s newfound quest.

Filled with an impressive cast of actors, Baggage Claim should enjoy some kind of benefit from them but its script turns them all into stereotypes from the gay male steward (Adam Brody) to the promiscuous best friend (Jill Scott). In fact the main reason the film is so tortuous is the fact that not a single character in the entire picture is likable. For instance Taye Diggs plays a obnoxious businessman campaigning for political office, a man so slimey you could roll him. Not only are Montana’s suitors unpleasant but she proves oblivious, a woman required to be dumb for the sake of the script. Patton tries to infuse her character with charm but she proves to be as manipulative and repellant as the rest of them.

As Montana flies all over the country looking for this special man the film opens up plot holes as big as the planes she is using as her very own Match.com. A film with no real intentions beyond being a piece of fluff people might see making this group of reliable actors either too blind to realise what they had gotten themselves into or in it for the paycheck, I’ve got my money on the latter.