Gently parting the milky-white thighs of 2011

I can only apologise if, as a result of me featuring on here photos from Jake's latest film, you went to see Love and Other Drugs. It's only the 3rd day of January but this is already a very strong contender for Worst Film Of The Year. Or possibly Decade.

I don't know where to begin in criticising it, because criticism implies there is a coherent entity to dissect. Whereas this was a sort of pulpy car crash of competing genre conventions with a leading couple playing coyly cute.

There were a couple of positives: Oliver Platt as Jake's apparently mindless boss provided the only really truthful emotional punch in this wildly dishonest film, with an unexpected and powerful monologue on the human condition.

Though in fairness to Platt he is a vastly under-rated genius: see him, for instance, in equally under-rated Huff, where his scene-eating performances steal the show from literally everyone else, including the not insubstantial Hank Azaria (who also appears in a bloodless role in this dreadful film).

Oh, and Jake shows us his bottom quite often and in loving detail, and we also get to gaze on his perfectly-formed thigh. No Jake-bits, though. Again. And he's trimmed his magnificent chest hair, presumably to tame it for the laydeez. Devastating.

Hair trimming reminded me of She's Out of My League, a truly generic movie starring up-and-coming comic actor Jay Baruchel. Whose geeky persona I generally rather like.

She's Out of My League is about a hundred times better than Love and Other Drugs, and about a thousand times more honest. That's despite it being a very dishonest film indeed.

Jay, for instance, gives us a comedic highlight of 2010 (or, if you're only just getting around to watching it, of 2011), when the straight character he plays has to get his straight buddy to lend him a hand to shave his balls (don't ask). His buddy takes a pride in his work which in most circumstances in life would be praiseworthy but, here, is deliciously creepy.

But that is not Jay's arse: no, apparently he is so concerned about his dignity that he had to have a butt-double. Dignity?! He's just played for laughs a scene in which he prematurely ejaculates in his beige linen trousers, and then has to hide the semen stain from his prospective in-laws.

That subtlety (I can't believe I'm using that word to describe a bog-standard multiplex comedy) is something desperately lacking in Jake's movie.

Although, in fairness, She's Out of My League also features the unspeakably cute Mike Vogel (seen here in another film, giving good body):

Mike has appeared in a few multiplex-friendly movies, including the unspeakably awful Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants in which his thighs were without question the twin highlights of the entire film.

I wonder who'd win a "Best Thighs" contest between Mike and Jake?

Now that's a movie I'd pay to see.