Movie Review - The Lovebirds (2020)

Michael Showalter's fourth feature film is also his third with actor-writer and Oscar-nominee Kumail Nanjiani. Nanjiani has been more of a lead in theatrical films, since the success of his and Showalter's second feature together, that of The Big Sick (2017). Unfortunately, it's been a bit of a sliding scale for me in terms of my enjoyment of their efforts together with this one being the least of their work. The Big Sick is better and their first effort together, that of Hello, My Name Is Doris (2016), is their best work. It was to me their funniest film together, even though Nanjiani's role in that 2016 film was quite minimal.

Written by Aaron Abrams & Brendan Gall with a co-story credit by Martin Gero, this feature could have been a rejected script from NBC's Blindspot (2015). I mention that series because Abrams, Gall and Gero all work on the series, Blindspot. Gero is the creator. Gall is a writer and Abrams is an actor, all on the same show. All three decided to band together and come up with this screenplay. Blindspot is a spy series where a group of FBI agents have to solve puzzles or engage in spy craft like going undercover in disguises in order to stop terrorists or mass murders. The series is in its fifth season and the latter seasons have utilized a lot of humor and comedy. If one is familiar with the series in its current iteration, then a lot of the elements of this feature will also feel familiar.

Kumail Nanjiani (Stuber and Men in Black: International) stars as Jibran, a documentary filmmaker in Louisiana. His nationality isn't made clear, but Nanjiani is Pakistani, so it's obvious his character is probably selfsame or Southeast Asian. He's basically Middle Eastern and most likely Muslim to most people who don't know specifically where his character originates. He's currently dating a black woman and they're both smitten and romantic with each other in the beginning. Four years go by in a jump and we see how that smitten behavior and romance have gone out the window. All he can do is now bicker and argue with his girlfriend. What we get initially is that he's a guy who is very pragmatic and not as impulsive. He's more anal about planning things.

All that changes when in a life-and-death situation, Jibran makes an impulsive decision for him and his girlfriend. That decision isn't totally illogical. It comes from the fact that certain minorities, if not all minorities have developed a distrust of the police and the criminal justice system. It comes from the near Islamophobic reaction that came in the wake of September 11, 2001. It comes from the shooting of unarmed black men, as we've seen in the Black Lives Matter movement. It's a distrust that if you're a minority, you won't get a fair shake or you'll even be condemned or killed in an extrajudicial killing. For those minorities, it's easier to avoid the authorities or just plain run, which is what Jibran does when a crime is committed that he didn't commit but assumes for which he'll be blamed. This is where the premise here diverges from Queen & Slim (2019), which made the male protagonist more culpable than Jibran is by miles and miles.

Issa Rae (The Photograph and Little) co-stars as Leilani, an executive at an advertising agency. She's the kind of person that would be ripe for a reality show on Bravo TV. She's not totally shallow, but she gets that accusation. One can understand why given how much she's into Instagram than at times her boyfriend. One might assume that she's then comparable to the female protagonist in Queen & Slim, and she is in as much as she's the one pulling Jibran along on this adventure. Unlike Queen & Slim, she's not the one who makes the initial decision to run, which begins the adventure, but she does pull her boyfriend along for the chase, which aligns with her character's initial traits of being more spontaneous.

However, whatever racial issues or criminal justice system critique that this film sets up is only a crutch. It's just a way of kicking off the lovers-on-the-run narrative that we have here. Unlike similar lovers-on-the run narratives, such as Queen & Slim or the quite seminal Bonnie and Clyde (1967), this film makes the lovers more innocent bystanders than anything else or lovers who are falsely accused. It becomes the black and brown-skin version of The Fugitive (1993), which technically already had U.S. Marshals (1998) as that version, but this version is the more comedic and Millennial version of that.

Otherwise, you could describe this film as an aborted script for Blindspot. This idea feels like it might have been an idea that Gero, Gall and Abrams conceived for Blindspot, but, for some reason or another didn't incorporate it into their NBC series. Later, they probably decided to take the idea and expand it to this feature. The series started rather serious, much like The Fugitive, but now in its fifth season has a much more comedic edge to it. Gero, Gall and Abrams perhaps decided to reinforce or bolster their comedic sensibilities by hiring two comedic actors in Nanjiani and Rae.

It becomes increasingly obvious though why this script would be an aborted one for Blindspot. Typically, in an episode of Blindspot, there are way more machinations. The mysteries on Blindspot have more twists and turns. It takes cleverness and ingenuity to solve the mysteries, which are often puzzles or riddles. It's not that this film needed more puzzles or riddles, but the characters move from one place to another, or one part of the mystery to the next with no real difficulty at all. It's all too easy. There's no cleverness or ingenuity at all. If this were a Blindspot script, it's a really dumb one, which some of those scripts were, but even when Blindspot has a lame mystery, the characters could still carry it.

That's what this film is banking on, but there was way more delving into the characters on Blindspot, then we get here. The characters here are too busy reacting to the ridiculous situations into which this film drops them with little moments to stop, breathe and reflect. The main comedic thrust is watching Jibran and Leilani argue and bicker about the situations. The riffs and jabs that are said in those bickering moments are funny, but they don't add up to much. Another film in this vein would ramp up the action set-pieces, like True Lies (1994) or Game Night (2018), but this film is devoid of action that would satisfy much of anyone.

The comedy is barely enough to satisfy anyone. There are good lines like when Leilani references Brett Kavanaugh and later The Amazing Race. Those lines were funny, as delivered by Rae. Other moments didn't land, such as when Leilani sings the song "Firework" by Katy Perry. It just didn't seem like a song that her character would sing.

Rated R for sexual content, language throughout and some violence.

Running Time: 1 hr. and 27 mins.

Available on Netflix.