Review: 'Life Happens' could serve as TV pilot for Krysten Ritter

Life Happens (R) (100 min.) — Conveniently coinciding with the buzz for Krysten Ritter's sitcom Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23, this fitfully amusing comedy could serve as the pilot for her next TV gig, or some other quirky Zooey Deschanel clone.

Kim (Ritter) and Deena (Kate Bosworth) are roommates with one-nighters dropping by so often that they're down to their last condom. Deena calls dibs, Kim goes unprotected with her Aussie mistake and winds up pregnant. Fast-forward a year and they're back on the prowl with an infant son in tow. You can easily imagine the crimp that creates in Kim's style, so ensuing jokes about spittle and baby yoga aren't surprises.

Life Happens is the kind of movie giving its hero an occupation like dog walker, then placing her in fashion and affairs that job couldn't support. Each of Kim's friends has somewhere else trendy to be, and something cooler than motherhood to do when they get there. Kim struggles through split-screen glimpses of fun she isn't having, becoming so desperate that she lies to a hunk (Geoff Stults) about whose baby it is.

That potential matchup is complicated when Kim lactates during their first sexual encounter, summing up director Kat Coiro's indelicate approach. It's a point in the movie as low as it sounds but something odd happens with it. The movie finds its heart with the truth Kim must now tell, leading her to do the responsible thing. Life Happens still has the obligatory relationship cracks and repairs to wade through but it's finally tolerable. C (Veterans 24 in Tampa)

Steve Persall, Times movie critic