Thoughts on a movie devoid of thinking
What happens when you take several tedious romantic movie stereotypes, wrap them around poorly written characters, and throw them into a pot along with bad writing and lack of understanding about film? The culmination of that god awful gumbo results in the poorly constructed, shallow, and ever so slightly sexist film entitled “How to Be Single.” I recently sat down to watch this movie and I wanted to pontificate about some of my thoughts and emotions stemming from the experience.
Gone are the days where we would watch a movie such as “As Good As it Gets” and spend the first act of a movie getting to know characters and investing on how they get to the crescendo of their story. This movie moves past that completely and shoves us forcefully right in the middle of the main character’s life. We join Alice, who is played by the less than tolerable Dakota Johnson, as she breaks up with her boyfriend of three years to live life as a single person before she settles down. That seems to, in her case, mean she wants to drink, live irresponsibly and sleep with as many men as possible. In her journey she is joined by her best friend, who she meets in the beginning of the movie, Robin. Robin is played by no other than Rebel Wilson, who seems to be trapped in a mold of her own making. Where she plays the overweight, oversexed, and sassy sidekick. The story ascends (or flatlines, I can’t decide which) to Alice learning what it means to be single and becoming a more introspective person.
That’s how the movie sells itself anyway. However right from the beginning the movie starts to muddy the waters of it’s own premise. Starting with the sister of Alice, Meg, played by Leslie Mann. A decent actor like her should be able to pull off the workaholic sister with no prospects, however her performance is forgettably phoned in. As she turns seemingly on a dime from a successful independent doctor into a baby crazy lunatic who doesn’t like to be called crazy. Her Joker like attitude about wanting to be a mother seemed less like character development and more like a manic episode brought on by bipolar tendencies. That was the first shift in tone which forced me to question this convoluted theme. The second being that the main character spends most of the movie pining over the person she broke up with.
There are other conquests to be had in the love life of Alice, however the men in this movie are nothing more than props. To be used by the women who cannot even once break from their stereotype shells, almost becoming props themselves. The needy naive one, the fun harmless one, the self assured independent, the different guys that they are all after that I didn’t bother to learn the names of as they are no different from the last one. It all is scarily reminiscent of a movie I’ve seen before.
I found myself not caring about these characters in anyway. I also found myself asking why anyone else would. We are offered zero context into their lives only glimpses made up of what their idea of being single is. None of which offer insight into human relationships, just poorly written dialogue. All leading to a climax that is so emotionally forced and about as deep as a puddle on a dry sunny day. With the ending of the story I felt robbed, not in getting an unsatisfying ending. As the ending wouldn’t have mattered, because these characters meant nothing to me. I felt robbed as if I invested my time into something not at all worth it. This film has no redeeming qualities.
Watching this 110 minute colonoscopy did get me to think about trends in Hollywood. This is the third movie I’ve seen from these same writers within a few years. With movies as bad as this, it seems clear what needs to happen. We as viewers need to demand more from our movies. We need to demand that studios take risks by creating amazing introspective films about ways in which we as human being relate to each other. With stories about how we can solve emotional conflict between two or more complicated and rounded characters. We cannot continue to settle for these assembly line movies that ultimately mean nothing and contribute nothing. How that is to be done is a bigger question than I can answer in one review.
I hope that if the reader is subject to this film that they can glean more from this than I. For all I could do is get up, look myself in the mirror and ask “What if this is as good as it gets?”