Despite its ability to make the screening audience laugh, Baggage Claim fails to even pull away from the terminal, let alone take flight. Based off a book by writer/director David E. Talbert, the film follows a 30-year-old Montana Moore with an impending sense of doom as she watches her baby sister get engaged and start planning her wedding. Pressure from her five-times married mother certainly doesn't help matters. Montana and her fellow flight attendant friends concoct the hair-brained scheme that allows her to travel around the country to "accidentally" run into old boyfriends in the hopes of having a romantic relationship to flaunt in her family's face at the wedding. With only 30 days before the wedding, Montana's serious time crunch leads to some major awkwardness that the attractive neighbor William Wright (Mr. Wright? How blatantly obvious could you possibly be?) is there to save her from.
Trying to relate the premise of this film sounds utterly ridiculously, and that feeling never goes away on screen"“in fact, one of the characters even brings up how preposterous their plan for Montana to find love really is. When the best part of the film is the sidekick gay friend (and token white guy), you know the film's got problems. Aside from the aforementioned friend, played by Adam Brody, and Montana's neighbor (Derek Luke), most of the acting feels extremely forced. Paula Patton as Montana can't do much with a role that involves a woman whining about her lack of love life, which feels like a hugely disproportionate part of Baggage Claim. She's good, but she's not a miracle worker, and the whining gets really annoying really quickly.
That being said, Baggage Claim has some pretty funny moments, but they're all the classic rom-com tropes that we're all way too used to seeing. Once it starts, you know exactly how it's going to end, and that just makes it a little painful to watch sometimes. Sure, it's an enjoyable movie, but it feels too long even at just over 90 minutes. To put it frankly, the filmfeels like that abandoned bag circling the conveyor belt in baggage claim. Baggage Claim means well, but it just fails to must the momentum to take flight. It's got a malfunction and is not cleared for take-off. How many flight puns and analogies can I use to make you understand that Baggage Claim is a film worth oversleeping for?
