Movie Review - Isn't It Romantic

This film wants to satirize or poke fun at romantic comedies as a genre, but what the movie fails to understand is that films and TV shows have been poking fun at this genre for the better part of this decade. What the writers fail to recognize is that people know the tropes, so the blatant listing of what those tropes are and the bluntness with how this movie hits us over the head with them are more annoying than insightful or ultimately subversive, which is what the film perhaps wants to be.

Written by Erin Cardillo (Life Sentence), Dana Fox (New Girl) and Katie Silberman (Set It Up), the movie points out the tropes that aren't uncommon of most Hollywood films regardless of genre, including the preponderance of beauty and wealth or fairy tale myths over realism, as well as stereotypes regarding race and gender. These aren't secrets though. Most movie-going audiences are aware. The writers pointing them out is akin to M. Night Shyamalan trying to explain tropes in comic book stories to fans of comic books, as he did in Glass. There are overly known things.

Over the decade or so, what films have done is simply defied those tropes or subverted them. The main trope is the preponderance of white people, as well as the preponderance of heterosexual relationships. Early last year, we got Love, Simon (2018), which gave us a gay teen romantic comedy. Crazy Rich Asians (2018) gave us an all-Asian cast romantic comedy. Those two films last year defied the trope with who the protagonists were and what their focuses were, not by simply having a white person say the tropes aloud, which is what this movie mainly does.

I suppose this movie does defy the trope of the female protagonist always being a skinny woman. The trope that's mainly in the cross-hairs is that of body-type. Most romantic comedies have a skinny woman in the center. Here, the female protagonist is a plus-size woman. However, while it's rare and more plus-size women need to be made the leads of these films like Queen Latifah did a couple of times, it's still not as if this film is breaking any kind of ground. The reason Love, Simon was notable is because while there have been several independent films that have done it, a major movie studio hasn't put a gay teen or an openly gay man as the protagonist in a romantic comedy that had a wide release as far as anyone can remember. The reason Crazy Rich Asians was notable because it was the first predominantly Asian cast by an American movie studio since 1993.

Rebel Wilson (How to Be Single and Pitch Perfect) stars as Natalie, an architect living in New York City. She works at a moderately successful firm that is currently pitching ideas for a billionaire developer. Her apartment is crappy. Food truck operators accost her on the streets. Her co-workers are jerks. She has a blind-spot to certain guys. She's nervous to pitch to the billionaire developer and really stand up for herself. One day, after suffering a head injury, she wakes up to realize that she's been transported into a romantic comedy or at least into an alternate reality where everything around her conforms to the tropes of a romantic comedy.

The difference is that she's the protagonist and she's plus-size. Her apartment becomes not crappy anymore. It looks spacious and luxurious. People don't accost her on the street. They help her. Her co-workers aren't jerks. All men are now attracted to her. Her abilities at work aren't nervous or anxious. It's a bit of a dream come true, but Natalie is taken aback. She doesn't accept it.

Unlike the characters in Pleasantville (1998), she's not trying to change things but she is trying to escape this alternate reality and get back to her normal life. However, this film is nowhere near as insightful and heartfelt as that 1998 classic. Aside from impressive production design, this movie doesn't do anything nearly as cinematic as Pleasantville.

That movie had fully fleshed out characters inside a repressed world, a world that is depicted in black-and-white, 1950's television shows. This film doesn't have fully fleshed out characters. They're all one-note stereotypes. This film doesn't even attempt to flesh them out or seems interested in fleshing them out or realizing the world in which it strands Natalie inside. What Pleasantville also does is show why the fantasy world isn't as great as compared to the real world. Although, one aspect could be that she can't have sex or curse because she knows the world is rated "PG-13."

Adam Devine (Modern Family and Workaholics) co-stars as Josh, a fellow architect or a designer who works at the same firm as Natalie. It's obvious that in the real-world he likes Natalie but she keeps ignoring him. In the fantasy world, he's basically the same. He doesn't change. However, in the fantasy world, he meets a model named Isabella, played by Priyanka Chopra. It would seem to be through him that we're supposed to see the flaws of this world and perhaps how the relationships are superficial or conforming to stereotypes either good or bad. Yet, those flaws don't seem particularly unique to this world as to how or why Josh should be with Isabella.

Liam Hemsworth (The Hunger Games and Independence Day: Resurgence) also co-stars as Blake, the billionaire who hires Natalie's firm to come up with plans for his next building. In the fantasy world, he's supposed to represent the same character as Richard Gere's character in Pretty Woman (1990). He's tall. He's handsome. He's charming. He's rich. He sweeps the woman off her feet. While he seems like the perfect guy and the most desirable, we're meant not to like him.

Natalie's argument would be because we usually don't see what happens in romantic comedies after the couple gets married, we never know if it's true happily ever after. Natalie's argument is that Blake might seem perfect prior to marriage but after marriage he could want all kinds of things that are horrible like for her to be barefoot and pregnant, as well as not work for a living but instead be his trophy wife. That's something which will most likely be tested in the upcoming sequels for Crazy Rich Asians, but is that a reasonable assumption to make about Gere's character in Pretty Woman or Eddie Murphy's character in Coming to America (1988)? I don't think so.

A bigger criticism could be against men who are wealthy. This film does seem to criticize the so-called lifestyles of the rich and famous. That is a trope with romantic comedies, as they're mainly vehicles to show off wealth and opulence or people of very good means, either middle to upper middle class. Something like Sweet Home Alabama (2002) is a rebuttal to that trope, but that's certainly not the norm. But, when it comes to the various tropes, there are plenty of films over the years that can be seen as rebuttals. More of them could be made, but this movie doesn't satisfy simply because it underscores that fact.

It's funny that this movie ends with an event that's not that far flung from the ending to Frozen (2013). Yes, that was an animated film but most romantic comedies have fairy tale aspects to them. Frozen was no different. It was a love story but not a love story between a man and a woman but instead a sisterly love. This one is instead one of self-love, but even that doesn't come across as well as it should. In other words, it's not clear that a lack of self-love is Natalie's problem. The fact that she can identify all the rom-com tropes proves that she thinks more of herself or has a good sense of self-awareness.

Wilson does give a good performance. I love her reactions to things in this fantasy world. She's even surprisingly fun in the musical numbers. She does Whitney Houston and Madonna. Those choreographed numbers also brought a smile to my face, so they're not that bad. They're not necessarily worth the price of admission. I would recommend watching the first episode of FX's Pose, as the dance number to Whitney Houston there was more emotionally resonant. Even though it wasn't great, I probably recommend They Came Together (2014) over this film as well.

Rated PG-13 for language, some sexual material and brief drug reference.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 28 mins.