Babel vs The Little Black Book

I watched both of these movies on DVD this weekend, fully expecting Babel to be good and The Little Black Book to be unwatchably bad. I wound up liking them equally (would give them both 2.5/5 stars). I thought Babel was preachy and obvious, recycling the oft used strategy of taking a simple plot and then breaking it up and presenting it in a complex way in efforts to seem more intelligent (see: Traffic, 21 Grams, Syriana). The Little Black Book had a surprisingly strong cast including Holly Hunter, Kathy Bates and Brittany Murphy, with a silly plot that was still entertaining and engaging. The real test is that my boyfriend didn't insist on turning it off, even after I gave him permission to do so because he complained that it was a chick flick. I also watched the Lake House recently but I won't waste precious blog space mentioning this terrible excuse for a film. I'm now running out of things to add to my Netflix queue (which explains the Lake House rental) and need to figure out what I'm going to watch next...