Romantic Comedy

Long Shot: Love and Laughs on the Campaign Trail

Jeremy BeckReviews
Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron in "Long Shot".

A romantic fantasy in more ways than one, Long Shot is a beauty-and-the-beast love story that simultaneously aspires to work as a thorny quasi-satire of contemporary politics. It aims not only to tell a crowd-pleasing tale of sweetness and levity, but also to impart a valuable message to the American electorate. This is a laudable idea, one with a rich cinematic history; Aaron Sorkin fans will fondly remember The American President, while film enthusiasts of a different generation may recall Mr. Smith Goes to Washington. But to borrow language from the political realm, Long Shot is a smoke-and-mirrors candidate, spouting handsome rhetoric but skimping on actual, meaningful substance. When the pairing of Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron is one of the more credible ideas on screen, you have perpetrated a fraud on the moviegoing public.

Have I gone too far? Maybe. If you approach Long Shot while wearing a certain set of blinders—if you ignore its poisonous ideas and its philosophical sloppiness—you may perceive it as a harmless little rom-com, a passably diverting use of two hours. The acting is quite good, not only from the leads but also the supporting cast, in particular June Diane Raphael as a dubious staffer and O’Shea Jackson Jr. as a loyal confidant. The script, by Dan Sterling (The Interview) and Liz Hannah (The Post), isn’t nearly as hilarious as it thinks it is, but it features its share of clever lines, while the direction, by Jonathan Levine (50/50), includes the occasional visual flourish amid the forgettable point-and-shoot mundanity. Theron gets to do a spit take and simulate rolling on molly, while Rogen, best known for his verbal dexterity, receives an opportunity to showcase his gifts as a physical comedian. It is an avowed cinematic truth that watching a man fall down a flight of stairs is always funny, as is seeing him spurt bodily fluids in unintended places. Read More

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Juliet, Naked: London Calling, Washed-Up Rock Star Emailing

Jeremy BeckReviews
Rose Byrne and Ethan Hawke in "Juliet, Naked"

If High Fidelity was a lovingly critical look at the maniacal behaviors of fandom—the all-consuming need to know as much as possible about popular artists, and to lord your superior tastes and knowledge over other worshippers of your ilk—Juliet, Naked is about the crippling consequences of artistry itself. Adapted, like High Fidelity, from a novel by Nick Hornby, it stars Ethan Hawke as Tucker Crowe, a has-been musician who a quarter-century ago released a beloved alt-rock album and then suddenly vanished from the public eye. Now he lives in his ex-wife’s garage in Upstate New York, barely knows four of the five children he fathered via four different women, and shuffles through grocery stores looking for cereal and gardening supplies. He’s like the ghost of Jeff Buckley crossed with the Dude from The Big Lebowski, if the Dude still collected royalty checks.

If that sounds like the recipe for a punishing study of squandered talent, never fear. Directed by TV veteran Jesse Peretz (Nurse Jackie, Girls) from a script by Evgenia Peretz (the director’s sister), Jim Taylor, and Tamara Jenkins, Juliet, Naked is a spry and largely delightful romantic comedy, a welcome summer breeze of warm humor and enveloping gentleness. It’s more of a curio than a landmark, which means it’s unlikely to be pored over for decades by the collectors and fanatics who populate Hornby’s works. But its disarming lightness should not be mistaken for insubstantiality. There’s craft in telling a story that’s decidedly pleasurable but doesn’t churn its sweetness into froth. Read More

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Crazy Rich Asians: Headed East with Prince Charming, But the Queen’s Got Claws

Jeremy BeckReviews
Awkwafina, Nico Santos, and Constance Wu in "Crazy Rich Asians"

There are no princesses with skin as white as snow in Crazy Rich Asians, but it’s a modern fairy tale all the same. Thoroughly clichéd yet undeniably crowd-pleasing, this cheery adaptation of Kevin Kwan’s best-selling novel by no means rewrites the rom-com playbook, but it does flesh out its pages with vivacity and color. Just as there can be wisdom in convention, there can be pleasure in familiarity, and there’s something strangely satisfying about seeing this movie hit all of the requisite beats—the quirky friends, the manufactured crises, the playful montages, the happily-ever-after resolution (oops!)—with energy and enthusiasm. It’s fun to watch, even if you’ve seen it all before.

Except, of course, that you haven’t, not quite. That’s because Crazy Rich Asians is the rarest of Hollywood studio releases: a movie made of Asians, by Asians, and for (though by no means exclusively for) Asians. This long-overdue development may inspire consternation as well as celebration—to quote a different (and of course whiter) member of the genre, “What took you so long?”—but in the spirit of the film’s plucky optimism, I’ll choose to see the good, and to hope that its commercial success may at long last portend increased diversity in American cinemas, both in front of and behind the camera. But while I’m very happy that Crazy Rich Asians exists, I can’t entirely ignore its flaws or exalt it as a model of the form. In other words, it is great that this movie was made; that it was made does not make it a great movie. Read More

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The Big Sick: Funny Games, Then the Coma

Jeremy BeckReviews
Kumail Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan in "The Big Sick"

“There’s not just going to be a magic spark,” a mother tells her son early in The Big Sick. “You have to work at it.” Honestly, has this woman never seen a romantic comedy? One of our most durable and pleasurable genres, it is undergirded by the notion that cinematic serendipity—the meet cute, the screwball misunderstanding, the shop around the corner—is very real, and could happen to you. Well, what better way to illustrate this than by telling a true story? The script for The Big Sick, Michael Showalter’s sweet and sensitive new movie, was written by real-life couple Kumail Nanjiani and Emily V. Gordon, and it chronicles their first date, ensuing courtship, and subsequent complications. Emily is portrayed by the terrifically talented and perennially underrated actress Zoe Kazan, but Nanjiani plays himself, lending further authenticity to a production already steeped in personal and locational detail.

Yet while the pieces are in place for The Big Sick to establish itself as a contemporary rom-com classic, it doesn’t quite do that—not because it’s a bad movie, but because it isn’t really a romantic comedy at all. Sure, there are plenty of laughs to be had, and for its first half-hour, the film executes the rom-com playbook with competence and conviction. As it progresses, however, The Big Sick becomes harder to pigeonhole. It operates, at varying times and often simultaneously, as a ruminative character study, as an exploration of the American immigrant family, and—most startlingly and most effectively—as a weepie. Read More

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Trainwreck: She’s a Downtown Girl, Living in a Man’s World

Jeremy BeckReviews
Amy Schumer and Bill Hader find love in "Trainwreck"

They may both tower over the modern comedy world, but Judd Apatow and Amy Schumer aren’t very much alike. Apatow’s works, particularly The 40-Year-Old Virgin and Knocked Up, are best known for the overgrown man-children at their center, but they’re also curiously wholesome and sweet. He relies heavily on crudity and profanity, but he does so in the service of a romantic ideal—the notion that love can conquer all obstacles and generate true happiness—that is pure, cornball formula. But Schumer is a deconstructionist. She has ascended to the apex of the comedy landscape precisely because of the way she obliterates formula, exposing stereotypes and upheaving convention. Trainwreck, which Apatow directed from a script written by Schumer, is the funny, fascinating, and somewhat frustrating attempt to reconcile these two disparate voices into a unified song. Like its protagonist, it is often at war with itself. And, like its protagonist, it is vulgar, confused, warmhearted, and generally a hoot to hang out with.

Schumer plays Amy (in case you doubted the story’s autobiographical bona fides), an unapologetically promiscuous boozehound whom one might call a slut or a female stud, depending on one’s level of sexism or enlightenment. The idea that women can be funny, frisky, and lewd should hardly have been a revelation in 2011, but it was novel enough to turn Bridesmaids (which Apatow produced) from a well-made, modest comedy into an outright phenomenon. Now, Trainwreck extends that sense of gender liberation to the bedroom. That’s where we first meet Amy, tumbling between the sheets with an anonymous schmo, extracting pleasure from him before feigning sleep to avoid the obligation to reciprocate. “Don’t judge me, fuckers,” she admonishes via voiceover. It’s an odd plea, given that she spends most of the movie judging herself. Read More

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