Talk:The Ex (2006 film)

I don't really think describing someone as a 'prick' is appropriate for Wikipedia, maybe the plot summary needs editing? 81.98.101.36 (talk) 20:35, 8 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Shouldn't this be titled "The Ex (2007 film)"?
 * Just moved it back to 2007. -Platypus Man | Talk 06:41, 7 May 2007 (UTC)

Plot
Tom (Zach Braff) and Sofia (Amanda Peet) are in bed in their New York City apartment, trying to decide on a name for their soon-to-be born son. Tom looks at the clock and realizes he’s got to get to work: today’s the day he’ll find out if he got his promotion!

Tom arrives at his job, which is being a cook at a nice restaurant. When he arrives in the kitchen, Tom sees that the rest of the kitchen staff is subdued, and asks what’s wrong. It seems that someone left some fish out overnight, which spoiled, and their mean boss Leon (Paul Rudd) is docking everyone’s pay. Tom’s friend Paco (Yul Vazquez) asks Tom to talk to Leon about it, but Tom is counting on the promotion to Head Lunch Chef and doesn’t want to make any waves. Leon comes into the kitchen. He tells one of the busboys that he has to work on Sunday even though the busboy had asked for the day off to attend his sister’s wedding. Paco offers to take the shift, but Leon won’t allow it. Paco tells Leon he’s being a jerk, so Leon fires him. Tom can’t stand it any more, and he squirts Leon in the face with chocolate sauce. He immediately tries to apologize, but Leon hits him with a raw pork chop. It escalates into a food fight, which ends in both Paco and Tom being fired and thrown out of the restaurant.

Meanwhile, Sofia is at her lawyer job, trying to finish things up before she leaves to become a full-time mother. As she’s talking with her coworker about her new life as a housewife, she suddenly gasps: she’s in labor! The baby is born and they name him after the anesthesiologist who gave Sofia the epidural (Oliver).

After the baby is born, Tom breaks the news to Sofia about him losing his job. Sofia is not happy about it, but Tom tells her that maybe it’s a sign that they should move out of New York and that Tom should finally accept Sofia’s father’s job offer at an advertising firm in Ohio. So, they move to Ohio. Sofia’s parents Bob (Charles Grodin) and Amelia (Mia Farrow) are very excited to see them. Bob tells Tom he’ll be working under Chip Sanders (Jason Bateman) who used to be in cheerleading with Sofia in high school.

At the office the next day, Tom is introduced to Manny (Fred Armisen), Carol Lane (Amy Poehler) and others. The owner of the company is Don Wollebin (Donal Logue), who has made some "new-age" changes to the company. They all pretend to throw around an invisible ball called the "Yes Ball', which is supposed to help them feel like a team or something. Tom thinks they’re really weird. At the first meeting, everyone is throwing the "Yes Ball" around the table. Tom tries to "throw one long' to the guy sitting at the end of the table, but the guy makes no move to catch it. Tom tells him, "You have to jump for those ones." The guy tells him he can’t; he’s in a wheelchair. Of course, this is Chip Sanders (Jason Bateman).

At home, Sofia is growing increasingly bored. She befriends the neighborhood kid Wesley March (Lucien Maisel) who is home alone all day while his dad is working. Wesley starts hanging around at Tom and Sofia’s house, watching TV, which he’s not allowed to do at home.

At the office, Tom blows a big meeting with an important client because he reveals some information that the client wasn’t supposed to know. Bob offers to take responsibility for losing the account because he doesn’t want Tom to get fired.

At dinner that night, Tom, Sofia and Wesley are eating hamburgers. Wesley shows off his trick of stuffing an entire hamburger into his mouth and swallowing it in one gulp. Tom thinks this would make a great commercial for one of their clients, Pickle Whip, which is tartar sauce being marketed as a hamburger spread, and gets Wesley to repeat the trick for Tom’s video camera.

The next day, they are having a meeting to pitch ideas for Wollebin. Chip has devised a campaign around a new pickle mascot who loves extreme sports. Wollebin rejects the mascot as being "too phallic". Tom brings out his video camera and says that he has an idea to share. Bob discourages Tom, saying that it’s the senior design staff that pitches the ideas, but Wollebin wants to see Tom’s video. Tom shows the clip of Wesley eating the hamburger, and Wollebin loves it. Wollebin assigns Chip to be Tom’s wingman on the project.

Sofia shows up at the office with the baby for a visit. Chip seizes upon her and starts reciting cheers that they used to perform in high school. Sofia goes along with it, but she seems to think Chip’s kind of weird. In the car on the way home, Tom tells Sofia he thinks that Chip has a crush on her. Sofia admits that when they were in high school, she and Chip had sex once. Tom is upset. Back at the office, Wollebin has given Bob a new desk lamp (with a sticker on it that says "Excellence") as a show of appreciation for Bob’s hiring Tom. The desk lamp gets very hot when it’s left on.

Tom and Chip go to a meeting with the Pickle Whip people. Chip starts the presentation, showing the video of Wesley eating the hamburger, and takes credit for the idea. He then announces that Tom will give the rest of the presentation and leaves the room. Tom is left to present a slide show full of graphs he doesn’t understand. He bungles the presentation. Back at the office, Chip apologizes for leaving the meeting, but says that he had been having bladder issues due to his paralysis.

Tom has been noticing things wrong with his desk (photo of him and Sofia is missing, his chair is too short) and he gets the idea to set up his video camera to keep surveillance on his desk. He conceals the camera underneath a magazine. Unfortunately, Chip sees Tom setting the camera up so he knows what’s going on.

Tom and Manny have a conversation about how Tom is miserable at the ad agency and feels he doesn’t fit in. Tom is also feeling insecure about his marriage. Manny says that he is training to be a marriage counselor, and offers to have a session with Tom and Sofia. The session isn’t really helpful, although in the car afterwards Tom and Sofia come close to admitting to each other how miserable each of them is. They are interrupted by Chip calling Sofia on her cell phone to reminisce about their cheerleading days.

At the office, Tom sits down at his desk and finds a gay porn movie playing on his computer. After shutting it off, he runs over to his surveillance camera, expecting that he’s caught Chip in the act. When he plays back the video, however, he discovers that the Wesley videotape had been in the camera and is now taped over. He’s still sitting there in shock with the Wesley tape in his hand when Wollebin comes over and grabs it, gives it to Bob and tells Bob to get dubs made of the video first thing in the morning. Tom waits until everyone has left the office, then sneaks over to Bob’s desk to get the Wesley videotape. All the lights in the office are off; so Tom turns the "Excellence" desk lamp on to find the videotape on Bob’s desk.

Tom then rushes home to find Wesley to try to get him to redo the video. Wesley says that he has recently decided to become a vegetarian and doesn’t want to do the trick anymore. Tom gets aggressive with Wesley, who runs inside his house and locks the door. Tom has grabbed Wesley’s skateboard and says he won’t give it back until Wesley performs his hamburger trick again. Tom is banging on the front door and threatening Wesley when Wesley’s father (John Benjamin Hickey) comes home, so Tom has to leave. He goes inside his own house and hides Wesley’s skateboard behind the couch. He tells Sofia that he has accidentally taped over Wesley’s video and he needs Sofia to convince Wesley to redo it. Sofia tells him to find someone else to perform the trick. Meanwhile, Wesley’s dad shows up at the door and demands his son’s skateboard back.

Tom goes back to the office the next morning only to find that there has been a huge fire. The fire had been caused by Bob’s desk lamp being left on and igniting a stack of papers. Wollebin thinks that the Wesley tape has been destroyed in the fire. Tom offers to get Wesley to make a new tape and goes back home.

Tom finds Wesley and a friend playing outside. As Tom pulls up in his car, Wesley tells the friend to go get help. Tom offers Wesley $1000 to redo the video. The friend and his mother Abby (Amy Adams) show up and the mother sprays some kind of gardening chemicals in Tom’s eyes to chase him off. He drops all the money, which Wesley and the friend scramble to pick up.

Tom is rinsing out his eyes in the kitchen sink when Sofia walks in and says that her dad just got fired. Tom explains that it’s because Bob left the Wesley video at the office and it got destroyed in the fire. Sofia says that she thought the Tom was the one who ruined the tape by recording over it. Tom gets angry and says that if Sofia had helped him convince Wesley to redo the video in the first place, they wouldn’t have this problem. Sofia tells Tom she’s going to stay with her parents until Tom calms down.

Tom rechecks the taped-over video. He realizes that Chip is the one who switched the tapes and put the Wesley videotape in the camera. He goes back to the office and snoops through Chip’s desk. He finds the photo of him and Sofia (with Tom’s face cut out), brochures for a fancy ad agency in Barcelona (Chip’s dream job, which he applied for weeks ago), and a photo of an able-bodied Chip, playing tennis. Tom rushes over to Bob and Amelia’s house to tell Sofia that Chip is faking his disability. He finds Chip there with the family, allegedly showing support for Bob who just got fired. Tom hands the photo of tennis-playing Chip to Sofia, then hoists Chip out of his wheelchair and drags him up a flight of stairs. Tom announces that Chip has been faking his paralysis all along, and he will prove it by throwing Chip down the stairs, which will make him use his legs to save himself. Tom tosses Chip, who tumbles down the stairs and lands in a heap at the bottom. Everyone is horrified by Tom’s actions. Sofia tells Tom that the photo is of Chip’s twin brother, who died five years previously. Tom is kicked out of the house.

Later on, Sofia is dropping Chip off at home. Chip is telling Sofia that he can see she’s unhappy, and he thinks it’s because she’s on the wrong path. Once Chip gets out of the car and Sofia drives away, Tom springs out of the bushes where he’s been waiting. They get into a fight and Chip beats up on Tom using his martial arts training. Tom tells Chip that despite all the rotten things that Chip has done to him, Tom still feels guilty about hating Chip because of Chip’s disability. Chip tells Tom that he’s bested Tom at his job, Tom’s in-laws like Chip better, and Chip is about 3 days away from sleeping with Sofia, so there’s no reason to feel sorry for Chip. Tom tells him he still pities Chip, so Chip surprises him by getting out of the wheelchair and standing on his own two legs. Chip had been faking the handicap since he was 14 years old to get sympathy and attention! Tom declares that he will tell everyone the truth, but Chip tells him that no one will believe him.

In the middle of the night, Chip gets a call from the ad agency in Barcelona, telling him that he got the job there.

The next morning, Wollebin calls Tom and tells him that they have a meeting set up with Wesley, which he should know, because Sofia is acting as Wesley’s lawyer! Tom goes to Bob’s house to find out where Sofia is. Bob is mowing the lawn and drinking scotch. Tom admits to Bob that he caused the fire. Bob is a little upset, but actually seems to be relieved to have been fired. He had tried to embrace Wollebin's policies (like the invisible "Yes Ball") but really, he thinks they’re all BS. He tells Tom that Sofia and Wesley are having their meeting at an ice cream parlor.

Tom arrives at the ice cream parlor where Chip, Sofia, Wesley and his dad are meeting to discuss Wesley becoming the spokesperson for Pickle Whip. Chip is about to get Wesley to sign a contract. Tom interrupts the meeting and tells Wesley not to sign. Tom is apologizing to Sofia when Chips cell phone rings. It’s the agency in Barcelona, finalizing Chip’s travel arrangements. Chip announces the news about his new job to the group, and then asks Sofia if they should book one plane ticket for him, or two. Sofia tells Chip that he’s creepy and she would never leave Tom, who is the love of her life. Chip finishes up his conversation with Barcelona, and we get to see who is on the other end of the phone. Of course, it’s actually Tom’s old friend from New York, Paco. Chip tells everyone that he doesn’t care whether Wesley signs the contract or not, because he’s leaving for his dream job. Thinking he has nothing to lose, he stands up out of his wheelchair and proves to everyone that he’s actually able-bodied. He pushes the wheelchair out of the ice cream parlor and continues to gloat through the window as he stands outside, where he is hit by a bus.

The next few days, the Pickle Whip commercial is being shot. Wesley is the star, with Tom and Bob in charge, and Tom carrying Oliver in a carrier on his chest. Tom thanks Bob for coming out to New York to help him get his own ad agency up and running. Meanwhile, Sofia has returned to her lawyer job and that she and Tom are very happy.

While the credits roll, Chip, now in a wheelchair due to his two broken legs, is trying to get into the ad agency building in Barcelona, where no one knows who he is.

Plot Summary is wrong
Was the film re-edited for DVD?

In the end of the DVD I just watched, Chip does not stand up in his wheelchair. 71.129.52.222 (talk) 16:03, 4 January 2008 (UTC)

Loss of my rights???
This was a great movie... Funny thing happened while I'm watching the movie. At the 20 minute mark, what do I see? Me on the stand testifying at my parent’s murder trial on the TV while Amanda is on the couch. I was curious if the producers were ever going to contact me to let me know I was appearing in a movie without my knowledge? Doing some research, the movie was allowed to use the footage because it appeared on CNN's Nancy Grace and was televised live on CNN. I just wanted to complain...

Matthew Johnson — Preceding unsigned comment added by 216.229.177.210 (talk • contribs) 20:05, 2 February 2012 (UTC)

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