Photo by Michael Parmelee/Warner Bros.
Without the recent romantic-comedy mini-boom happening on Netflix, the new anti-rom-com (but secretly very pro-rom-com) rom-com Isn’t It Romantic (in theaters on February 13, just in time for Valentine’s Day) might seem a bit out of date. Most of the glossy fantasies it skewers—bright-hued tales of harried urban career women finding their Mr. Right—are at least 10 years old, the bulk even older than that. Though I suppose that just because the studios don’t really make movies like this anymore, that doesn’t mean the classics aren’t without their still-devoted fans, a generation of moviegoers and re-watchers (largely women, Isn’t It Romantic suggests) who have been steeped in the mild toxicity of the rom-com lie—or, at least, its embellishment.
The clever conceit of Isn’t It Romantic is to critique the form by self-consciously throwing itself right into it. Rebel Wilson, enjoying a lead role after years of being the weirdo sidekick, plays Natalie, once an ardent fan of the genre but now hardened against it. Natalie lives in New York City, is a talented if under-appreciated architect, and has a cute guy friend at the office, Josh (Adam Devine), who’s got an obvious crush on her. If you squint, her life is actually the ideal romantic-comedy setup.
But director Todd Strauss-Schulson is careful to render Natalie’s world beige and shabby and genuinely embarrassing, a far cry from the cutely jewel-toned haplessness of most rom-com heroines. That all changes when Natalie bonks her head in a gnarly subway mugging and wakes up to find her life reordered: she’s got a fabulous apartment, a fabulous gay neighbor and vizier, a more high-powered role at a sleeker version of her office, and a seriously hot love interest played by Luke Hemsworth. It’s a dream whose surreality Natalie greets as a nightmare. The adventure of the film is Natalie finding her way out of it.
The initial phase of discovery, Natalie slowly realizing what she’s woken up into, is a lark. The film lovingly thumbs its nose at a variety of rom-com cliches: the sparkling cleanliness of city living, the glamazon-professional arch-nemesis, the softly upbeat pop songs that drench the proceedings in wistful moxie. It’s fun watching a studio movie so directly address the trappings of its past product. (The script is by Erin Cardillo, Dana Fox, and Katie Silberman.) Though in all its supposed criticism, one does detect a whiff of sneaky, pro-brand veneration. A bit like Ralph Breaks the Internet satirizing Disney princesses, Isn’t It Romantic (from Warner Bros.) wants you to buy the shit too.
Wilson is a good flusterer, adept at a repelled reaction, and in that, works quite well in the earlier stretches of Isn’t It Romantic. But she’s gradually let down by the film, as the kickiness of its premise has to settle into a plot and things get muddled. The movie tries to both horde its (calorie-free) cake and gobble it up, urging Natalie to break free of convention while learning to love it. That’s not an impossible equation to figure out, but it is a tricky one. Isn’t It Romantic can’t quite get the math right, certainly not in its swift hour-and-28-minute run time.
The movie’s conclusions are easily, quickly arrived at—which, some might argue, is how romantic comedies work. But Isn’t It Romantic is also going for something a bit more complicated than that simple arc; it’s grafting a contemporary media critique on top of the well-worn tropes. In fits and starts, it arrives at a piquant little resolution between those two things, moments when Natalie’s wry commentary fuses adroitly, satisfyingly with the sunnier comedy. But too often the film seems a bit uncomfortable in its conflicted mission, unsure if it should melt or stay meta.
The gay character—Donny, played ably by Brandon Scott Jones—is an interesting example. We only briefly meet him in Natalie’s real life, but in the rom-com-ized version he’s a fashionable, splashy queen with seemingly no interior life, a joke about how gay bestie characters are given short shrift in mainstream entertainment aimed at straight women. Which, O.K. That’s a somewhat stale but not invalid observation.
But it’s not clear whether we’re supposed to be laughing with or at Donny. I don’t think the movie knows. The problem is further compounded when Donny is eventually given something of a backstory, one that humanizes him but also finds him somewhat ruefully detailing his transition into flamboyancy—as if being queeny is itself the problem, and not how queeniness is processed and contextualized by the hetero world. The movie is really confused about this character, a representation of its broader uncertainty about its politics.
A movie like this needn’t be political, I suppose. But Isn’t It Romantic inserts itself into discussions like these, only to clumsily bat them around. I wish the movie was just a tad sharper, took a little more time to really clarify its stance on this whole social-sexual-commercial world of romantic aspirationalism, to make its commentary and its humor really sing—and sting.
As is, Isn’t It Romantic is a good concept executed well enough for February. I don’t think it will shatter the institution of romantic comedy—no more so than it’s already been gradually dismantled and reshaped and digested by television—but it’s a soothing enough balm for those of us getting a little annoyed and itchy as we wait for our own happy ending, already decades overdue.
This story was originally published by Vanity Fair
via USAHint.com
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