When it comes to romantic comedies Hollywood isn't very creative. For years now they've followed a few basic formulas. One common one is two people hate each other at the beginning and by the end fall in love. Another is two people love each other, then hate each other and then love each other again. Yet another example is the outcast gets the in-crowd person to fall in love with them or the in-crowd person fakes being in love with the outcast to eventually fall in love anyway. With each type the outcomes and major plot points are almost always the same. The difference lies in how the story is told.

What Happens in Vegas follows the love, hate, love formula. But it does provide an enjoying ride along the familiar story.

Ashton Kutcher plays a slacker who happens to have a job because of his dad's business. One day dad decides he no longer cares for his son's slacker attitude and fires him. Ashton then decides to immediately go out and find a new job to straighten out his life. No wait, he does what every good slacker does; he goes to Vegas with his friend. But since he's not the kind of guy to actually save money it isn't explained exactly how he pays for this.

Cameron Diaz plays a control freak that has her perfect life and perfect job. Although we do get the idea that her fiancee isn't too happy with the situation. In fact he dumps her at his doorstep while all their friends are hiding for his surprise birthday party. Her friend convinces her to use the tickets to Vegas she bought for her fiancee's birthday. So she and the friend are off to Vegas.

By some booking glitch they are given the same room which causes a nice little goofy scene where the girls beat the crap out of them for walking in on them during stages of undress. They then go downstairs to get the room situation straightened out gaining penthouse suites and amenities to local hot spots. Ashton convinces Cameron to hang out with them for the night. They hit it off and are clearly on their way to being good friends or possibly more.

They went with more.

The next morning Cameron wakes up to discover she got married the night before. She and Ashton at first agree that they should immediately get divorced and write the whole thing off as a mistake. But Ashton wins three million with Cameron's quarter in a slot machine. So of course starts the fight for the money.

We get a nice cameo from Dennis Leary as the judge that freezes the money while they try to work out their marriage. If they show after six months they at least tried they could split the money.

Essentially at this point we start the typical formula where they fight each other with creative ways of proving they are more worthy than the other. Cameron sends over some girls to try to entice Ashton to cheat on her. Which is odd since no where in this movie did they suggest that Cameron even knew the kind of girls that would sleep with her new husband that they just met. Ashton tries to get her ex-fiancee to chase after her again after he sees how different she is from when they were engaged. Other funny bits happen between the two of them trying to prove the other isn't trying to make the marriage work.

During this time I was thinking that Ashton could just try to have sex with her and she would of course refuse since she hated him. He could then claim he tried but she refused him sex therefore she wasn't trying. But they didn't consult me when writing the movie so there's a flaw in their clever plot.

Following the formula we have to get to a point where one of them starts to fall for the other which causes the other to do the same. Ashton is the first to fall and helps Cameron get a big promotion by being the perfect, fun-loving husband in front of her boss. She decides maybe he isn't so bad until she figures out that Ashton sent her ex to try to win her back. She gives up and agrees to let Ashton have all the money as long as she got a divorce.

The formula then dictates that Ashton should feel bad about the whole thing and chase after her to win her back. He does and she agrees to marry him again. So, as you see, they followed the formula pretty good.

But it was an enjoyable movie with some funny bits. Ashton is Ashton if you like his kind of thing and Cameron is funny as she often is. Plus she isn't too hard to look at.

This is the kind of movie to watch with a date as it isn't a total chick flick with some elements the guys would like and I'm not talking about just looking at Cameron. Ashton's scenes with his friends and dad were usually funny. If you want something different, cute and often funny then I would recommend it.