Indeed, credit Story and writers Keith Merryman and David A. But that’s not to say that the women get short shrift. SO, it’s interesting to note that the film, even though it’s based on a self-help book intended mainly for women, seems to spend more time with the men, maybe because that’s where most of the laughs are. Really, it’s just a title you’re promising. There are no pesky Katnisses to cast, no elaborate stories to streamline. The appeal of filming such books presumably has something to do with the built-in popularity of the source material mixed with the freedom to do anything you want. The guys eventually discover the book themselves, and respond in kind. The women in their lives, and the women who are about to be in their lives, have to use Harvey’s book to find a way to get what they want out of these guys. These four are rounded out with the somewhat-less-fussed-over Happily Married Guy (Gary Owen) and the Even Happier Divorced Guy (Kevin Hart, whose Tasmanian Devil–like energy is a nice kick in the pants whenever things seem to be getting too earnest). It quickly identifies some classic male types, each of whom can be found in the same group of friends: the Player (smooth-talking ladies’ man Romany Malco, whose deadpan seductions are the funniest thing here), the Non-Committer (strangely thin stoner Jerry Ferrara, likable), the Mama’s Boy (starry-eyed pushover Terrence J), and the Dreamer (ambitious, ridiculously good-looking chef Michael Ealy). I haven’t read Harvey’s book, so I can’t tell how accurately it conforms to established romantic-comedy tropes, but the film sure does. This is the battle of the sexes reimagined as competing reading groups. It occupies a place in the movie akin to the one the flying saucer occupies in The Day the Earth Stood Still it lands, and everything changes. It’s reviewed obsessively by the female characters, read as counter-offensive by the males, and fought over in bookstore aisles. The book itself is all over the place in the film. In Tim Story’s pleasantly zippy adaptation, former comedian Steve Harvey’s self-help book Act Like a Woman, Think Like a Man is both guiding spirit and key plot impetus.
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