Reese Witherspoon: 5 Awesome Performances And 5 That Sucked

2. Lisa - How Do You Know (2010)

Following her critical success with Walk The Line, Witherspoon admits to spending several years "kind of floundering career-wise." This led to the actress starring in a string of misguided films that all centered around Witherspoon as a woman caught in a love triangle between two men. The first of these films was James L. Brooks's romantic comedy How Do You Know, which starred Witherspoon as a thirty-something former national softball player who struggles to choose between a philandering baseball star boyfriend (Owen Wilson) and a business executive being investigated for white-collar crime (Paul Rudd). It can be argued that Witherspoon is the most obviously determined actor in this little group, although, she seems incapable of goofing her way through the movie. Her performance feels less like a coherent narrative than a series of vignettes in which the character says improbably witty things and behaves in ways that aren't tethered to rational behavior. You can sense that the actress is simply performing for the camera. Overall, Witherspoon's charm is replaced with tentativeness, confusion and the exaggerated facial expressions of a sitcom comedienne.