The Shape Of Things

Beauty certainly has its price for charming, dorky Adam (Rudd), who morphs into an uber-chic geek with the help of his artsy, tough-love girlfriend, Evelyn (Weisz), and a schnozz-shaping surgeon. Unfortunately, Rudd’s puppy-dog eyes and endearingly awkward demeanor can’t quite compensate for the overall lack of charismatic energy and corrosive chemistry in the film version of Neil LaBute’s Off Broadway play. EXTRAS Director-screenwriter LaBute’s stage-to-screen introduction and feature commentary seem like last-ditch efforts to justify the blase, verbose adaptation (”It’s nice to work on something that has a lot of dialogue…good solid writing”). Maybe that’s why the trailer is included — to remind viewers why they wanted to see this. As if LaBute’s plugs for his film weren’t shameless enough, the studio offers recommendations for (surprise!) other Universal pics.