Rebel Wilson shines in funny but inconsistent Isn't It Romantic

Rebel Wilson and Adam Devine in Isn't It Romantic. Image courtesy Warner Bros.

At its best, Isn't It Romantic is a funny, charming little deconstruction of, and a homage to, the romantic comedy. Like some of the best rom-coms, it features a charismatic lead character and a winning sense of humor to keep the audience invested in its lead's romantic foibles. Even as it points out the genre's flaws, the film can't quite escape some of the more troubling romantic comedy trappings, eventually succumbing to one of the most harmful clichés without completely realizing that it did so.

Isn't It Romantic stars Rebel Wilson as Natalie, a low-level, put-upon architect trying to navigate the complexities of life in the big city. A vociferous hater of romantic comedies, Natalie takes a knock to the noggin trying to escape a purse snatcher and wakes up in her own romantic comedy. In this world, Natalie is the star architect in her office who unwittingly charms her firm's big client Blake (professionally handsome Liam Hemsworth). Her neighbor Donny (Brandon Scott Jones) is her sassy, obsessive, gay friend. Her real-life assistant and friend Whitney (Betty Gilpin) is now her main rival in her firm. And her best friend Josh (Adam Devine) stumbles his way into a whirlwind romance with model/yoga ambassador Isabella (Priyanka Chopra). Natalie is eager to escape the perfect vision of New York she's conjured and must complete her story arc, learning a valuable lesson about herself as she critiques numerous rom-com tropes along the way.

There is a fundamental issue with Wilson serving as an anti-romantic lead. The film explains why a woman like Wilson's Natalie can't be the star of her own romantic comedy while featuring her in a romantic comedy; the meta nature of the comment doesn't absolve the film from commenting on it so frequently in the first place. Despite the frequent jokes at her expense, Wilson is a pretty solid, and sometimes excellent, rom-com lead. Her inherent sarcasm and self-effacement doesn't overwhelm the character; Wilson finds a skosh of sweetness and charm to veer Natalie away from misery. It's a shame Wilson has to take this route to showcase her rom-com chops, but at the least it gives her a chance to reinforce she can be more than a supporting actress. 

 

Wilson is good enough that, like the best rom-com actresses, she could carry some otherwise lackluster material. Fortunately, she doesn't have to do that for Isn't It Romantic. Despite the premise's snarky overtones, the criticism it has for the genre is more loving than cruel. The film is generally careful on what it targets for criticism, hitting the weaker aspects while using the important notes – the tender speech, a solid musical number – to build out its message. What is left is a film that mocks and embraces the idealistic nature of its genre, using the familiar beats to tell a story of self-fulfillment

 

Then again, Isn't It Romantic can't escape some of the pratfalls it mocks so heartily. This is a flaw for meta comedies, as the line between calling out a flaw and featuring it is very, very thin. Take, for example, the gay best friend stereotype. The film calls it out as a regressive depiction, yet the jokes about Donny's character are rooted in the stereotype itself – the humor is directed at Donny, not from him. Then there's the battle between Natalie and Isabella for Josh's affection. The love triangle is another well-worn rom-com trope, a plot that exists solely to pit women against one another – the man at the center is rarely, if ever, held responsible for his role in the conflict. Isn't It Romantic ultimately steps away from basing its finale on some resolution to its love triangle, but it still uses it as a crutch in Natalie's journey of self discovery.

The message the film ultimately has is a pretty nifty one, at least until the ending when Natalie puts her lesson into practice and takes a rather awkward step backward into the very dangerous nice guy trap. The ending to Isn't It Romantic validates some rather toxic behavior from Josh, while at the same time having Natalie take a step back in her personal growth. Given the amount of time the film spent getting Natalie to a point of independence, the decision to strip that away in favor of convenience and one of the more hazardous clichés is a major downfall for this film. That last choice dampens the film's cheerful message, ending a very sweet film on a remarkably sour note.

Review: Three and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

 

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 92 minutes

Genre: Romantic Comedy

tl;dr

What Worked: Rebel Wilson, Script

What Fell Short: Ending, Stereotypes

What To Watch As Well: Annie Hall, When Harry Met Sally, Enchanted

Dressmaker obtuse peculiar

Kate Winslet in The Dressmaker. Image courtesy Broad Green Pictures.

The first word that came to mind to describe The Dressmaker after watching it is bizarre. But it's not a good bizarre like the works of Davids Cronenberg and Lynch, who make movies that force audiences to interpret what they're watching with minimal input from the respective director. No, this is bad bizarre, strange for the sake of being strange with little no idea of what it wants to accomplish at the end of its final reel. The only thing The Dressmaker will think about it how poorly constructed the clunky flick you just watched is.

The Dressmaker is several films in one, it's opening sequence shoving things toward a soap opera and melodramatic direction. It could've made for a fascinating engagement to watch Kate Winslet (as the eponymous sartorial creator) and Hugo Weaving vamp things up for 90 minutes with terrific fashion ensembles in the middle of nowhere Australia. (It’s worked before for Weaving.) Then the film moves forward and the story goes into so many directions at once the question arises as to what, exactly, the film is trying to do. Is it a revenge tale featuring a black sheep returning home for a little vengeance so many years later? Is it a noir with Winslet as the femme fatale? Is it a study of the dangers of memory, how forgetting is sometimes for the best? Is it a mismatched romance between Winslet and Liam Hemsworth as the wokest Aussie in 1952? Is the film trying to show how difficult it can be for mothers (in this case Judy Davis) and daughters to reunite? Is this a film like Chocolat or Needful Things in which an outsider causes ruffles in the small community? Is it a profile of the evils hidden within a small community? Is it a comedy, a drama, a dramedy or a coma? Somehow, the answer is yes, which is a problem for a film trying to tell something resembling a linear plot and eschewing dreaminess or the fantastical. So many elements exist the filmmakers simply have no time to delve into any of them with some sense of completion or satisfaction. It creates an atonal experience by combining so much of everything the viewer is left with nothing to latch onto.

The film has this sort of attitude of tossing as much stuff into it as possible that, perhaps, something might land somewhere near successful. Admittedly, the ensembles designed by Winslet's character are quite lovely, and Weaving plays things so campy it becomes somewhat charming to watch him revel at Winslet's sartorial creations. No one else follows his lead, aside from a few slips by Winslet into behaving in a somewhat scandalous fashion, so The Dressmaker comes across as more straight faced than it ought to be. It's strange how this film both rejects and embraces its oddness, pushing away from being too strange yet replacing character development with quirks. It tries too hard to be odd when it does go in that direction, becoming a subpar Twin Peaks and failing to provide that show’s sense of community intrigue.

At least Twin Peaks has some grounding and logic for its esoteric leanings. The Dressmaker doesn’t have that same grounding, lacking true motivation for its plot machinations besides an illogical revenge plot. The film has so many malarkey plot twists designed to forcibly advance Winslet's character into something resembling independence the whole endeavor could easily break a viewer’s mind trying to put the events into some form of logical flow. The initial prompt for the event is a lost memory from Winslet’s past, and the film resolves it in a fittingly messy fashion, only to continue beyond any point of interest through a bombastic ending that loses any sense of logic within a few moments of thought.

Thought, really, is anathema to The Dressmaker. Thought provides an undercurrent of logic to an obtusely illogical situation designed by filmmakers to be appear difficult and challenging. Films like this fail because they try to appear smart and lose that sheen once people can start parsing through what they witnessed. The Dressmaker requires more direction than it currently has, some underlying point to make Winslet’s return home emotionally affecting or at least designed to be more than a series of flukes. Otherwise all that’s left is watching Hugo Weaving go mad over Dior, which isn’t a bad thing but not something that can carry a two-hour movie.

Review: One and a half out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer

Rating: R

Run time: 118 minute

Genre: Drama

 

Ask Away

Target audience: People down for obscure Aussie flicks.

Take the whole family?: Stick with the rating recommendation on this one; it gets a bit bloody and very uncomfortable.

Theater or Netflix?: Stay home if you must watch it.

Academy Award chances?: Hopefully about zero for the regular categories, even with Hugo Weaving's daffy, fascinating performance. It might get a little something for the costuming though, as the era-appropriate apparel looks quite fetching, albeit not on the same level as, say, Carol from last year.

Watch this instead?: Young Adult has a concept but adds in a lot more bite and loses the melodrama, and Twin Peaks hits the odd community notes far, far better. Also, just because Kate Winslet's involvement, seek out the tremendously brilliant Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

One last game, for old times' sake

Jennifer Lawrence stars in "The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2." Image courtesy Lionsgate

“Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 2” leaves a mildly bitter taste on the tongue immediately after viewing, a sensation linked directly to the middling dialogue and a silly ending in the same vein as the last few moments of the “Harry Potter” finale a few years back. Yet for a film targeted at a young demographic, it has a pretty excellent stew-quality to it; mulling it over for a night or so results in a hint more respect for it than the initial impression leaves. It's still not great and a bit of a letdown for a series that hasn't had a below-par movie, but it deserves brownie points for thematic depth and emotional heaviness despite its frequent trips into camp territory.

“Mockingjay” kicks off right after the conclusion of the first part, with heroine Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence) recovering after she is strangled by brainwashed romantic interest Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson). The scene itself features poor Lawrence attempting to speak with bruise marks still on her throat, an idea that sounds strong on paper but is a better vehicle for unintentional laughter than emotional resonance.

Nevertheless, Lawrence is quite peeved by what happened to her (possibly) beloved Hutcherson, and she hatches a plan to assassinate the evil President Snow (a ridiculous, over the top Donald Sutherland) for revenge. Her mission comes against the wishes of steely rebel leader Alma Coin (Julianne Moore) and the mysterious Pluutarch (a dearly missed Philip Seymour Hoffman), but she sneaks her way to the front lines of the war anyway and she joins her other beloved, Gail Hawthorne (Liam Hemsworth). Both are placed on a special squad for the rebels' invasion of the capitol, along with Hutcherson, the charming Finnick Odair (Sam Claflin) and squad leader Boggs (Mahershala Ali), to film propaganda pieces and strike fear into the hearts of the Capitol. A relatively safe mission goes awry thanks to Sutherland's idea of turning the city streets into yet another round of Hunger Games, forcing Lawrence and her team to fight for their lives as they march toward Sutherland's mansion. Woody Harrelson pops in and out as Lawrence’s mentor Haymitch Abernathy to offer token bits of wisdom, while Jeffrey Wright, Jena Malone, Elizabeth Banks, Willow Shields and Stanley Tucci return to their respective roles to pad out the runtime for a few moments.

A film as long as “Mockingjay” shouldn’t need the padding, and the two-plus hour movie often feels much longer than that. The film is slowed down by scenes that add little to nothing to the narrative flow, except to try and justify splitting the third book in Suzanne Collins' popular young adult series into two films. It never quite works, and the result is two OK films with far too much fat instead of one pretty good that's three hours long but comparably lean to the four-and-a-half hours combined length of these two flicks.

So what do viewers get with the extra time with Katniss and her friends? A fair amount of relationship drama – the weakest part of the series by far, although Malone's character provides a nice meta jab at its inanity – and really miserable dialogue that provide more of that unintentional humor mentioned earlier. Audience members are blessed too with lazy writing tricks – Sutherland's Snow employs the blood in the handkerchief trope – and a few scenes of Lawrence looking confounded. Lawrence is more often than not a terrific actress, but “Mockingjay” brings out the worst in her. She’s horridly entertaining in her two big emotional scenes; then again, she is reacting to an especially bored cat and an disengaged baby.

It takes more digging than it should to get past the annoyances, but there is something worthwhile within “Mockingjay's” heart. It's a morally complex film, with the idea of doing the right thing often a pipe dream given the realities of war. War is a dirty contest in this film, a fact represented by the amount of grime and sewage contestants have to wade through to fight, and it becomes even messier when the characters debate exactly how far they are willing to go to win. Even Lawrence's Katniss, who state emphatically her moral boundaries during wartime, finds it difficult to stick with that moral rigidity when the opportunity for revenge arises.

So do the ends justify the means? Not quite in “Mockingjay,” as the film acknowledges there is at least one major line – eerily reminiscent of the attacks in Paris last week – that should not be crossed. It's a brutal scene carried over from the source material and presented with striking simplicity by the filmmakers, and it turns what is a dark series into an absolute horror. It's a moment that emphasizes the hopelessness of the war and Lawrence's quest; people who fight evil never leave the fight as pure as they entered it.

Review: Three out of Five Stars

Click here to see the trailer.

Rating: PG-13

Run time: 137 minutes (Two hours and 17 minutes)

Genre: Action

Ask Away

Target audience: Teen girls and fans of the either the books or the rest of the film series.

Take the whole family?: Kids will get turned off a bit by the explosions and a rather horrifying plot twist, so keep children younger than 10 at home.

Theater or Netflix?: Probably could wait until its available on home viewing, but stick with matinee if opting to see it on a large screen.

Is Jennifer Lawrence worth the money?: Lawrence, who will apparently make $20 million for her upcoming film “Passengers,” has more than justified an increase in pay. Even if her acting isn't up to her own standards in this one, she's still the face of a major box-office film series, and she is a leading figure in the “X-Men” series to boot. The star system is overrated for sure, but Lawrence has earned that money based on the rules of the game.

Watch this as well?: “Catching Fire” is the best individual entry in the series – Philip Seymour Hoffman is great, and the action is much tighter than the rest of the series. Similarly, check out the third “Harry Potter” film, “The Prisoner of Azkaban,” which is by far the best in that series and is a terrific standalone film.