By Mark HadleyTuesday 11 Jan 2011MoviesReading Time: 2 minutes
The Dilemma
Rating: TBC
Distributor: NBC Universal
Release Date: January 13
The Dilemma builds a comedy around some issues that are no laughing matter. Front and centre is whether or not you should tell your best friend that their spouse is having an affair.
Vince Vaughn plays Ronny Valentine, one half of an auto design partnership that is one deal away from the big time. His partner and life-long best friend Nick Backman (Kevin James) has a marriage Ronny considers to be exemplary in every respect – until he catches Nicks wife Geneva (Winona Ryder) fooling around with another man.
What follows is a twisting, well crafted comedy from director Ron Howard based around Ronny’s resulting dilemma: should Ronny tell his partner about the affair, and ruin his life, or keep quiet and let his friend’s dream life continue? Which is more important, knowing the truth or being happy?
The Dilemma is a fun two hours about a topic that is, sadly, all too familiar. Close to one in two marriages in Australia end in divorce and infidelity is often the cause or outcome of these broken relationships. Even sadder is the false choice Ronny faces. Truth and happiness can’t rest in opposition to each other. The moment someone discovers their contentment is built on a lie they tend to re-evaluate every moment of happiness that preceded it, as well as the people that helped them build that faulty foundation. It’s as if their entire past has been upended and nothing can give them peace anymore. On the contrary, Jesus tells us that real freedom, relational as well as spiritual, relies on the truth.