Two stars. Rated R, for violence, crude sexual content, and relentless profanity
By Derrick Bang • Originally published in The Davis Enterprise, 6.5.20
Personality compensates for very thin material — to a modest degree — but that’s hardly enough to make this needlessly vulgar rom-com worth anybody’s time.
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| Having successfully evaded a killer — a second time — Leilani (Issa Rae) and Jibran (Kumail Nanjiani) attempt to blend with a crowd of typical New Orleans tourists. |
The Lovebirds is little more than a two-person stand-up routine occasionally interrupted by plot. The script — blame Aaron Abrams, Brendan Gall and Martin Gero — aspires to be a profanity-strewn update of Martin Scorsese’s After Hours, but that dark comedy had a much sharper script (Joseph Minion, take a bow).
Actually, director John Landis’ Into the Night, which also arrived in 1985, covered similar territory: a white-collar couple unexpectedly enduring a night of hell when circumstances prompt them to venture into dodgy, big-city neighborhoods laden with all manner of creepy individuals.
The one fresh element here: Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani mine sharply perceptive humor from their racial heritage. Rae’s Leilani, in particular, gets a lot of comedic mileage from pointing out that white cops never would believe the increasingly convoluted mess that has ensnared them.
Granted, Rae and Nanjiani are adept at well-timed one-liners. But you won’t find much “acting” here; they essentially play themselves. Leilani is feisty, forthright and empowered; Nanjiani’s Jibran is a petulant, under-nourished milquetoast who masks his physical insecurity with higher-education haughtiness. He’s been that guy many, many times before.
The credits unspool over a meet-cute montage that turns them into a couple; after director Michael Showalter’s name appears, we leap forward three years, at which point Leilani and Jibran are inches from a spiteful separation. They’ve fallen into a rut, and sniping at each other is easier than working through it.
The bickering is quite crude and offensive, which (much too frequently) is what passes for humor these days. Indeed, I wouldn’t be surprised if viewers bailed within the first 10 minutes of this Netflix original.
In fairness, things improve. Marginally. (Not enough.) Showalter and Nanjiani are working way beneath their talents here; their previous collaboration — 2017’s The Big Sick — is vastly superior.
Anyway…
En route to a dinner party with friends, verbally skewering each other along the way, Jibran takes his eyes off the road and smacks into a bicycle messenger. Justifiably horrified, Jibran and Leilani are surprised when the bloodied guy deflects their offer of assistance, regains his bike, and pedals away.
As the bewildered Jibran and Leilani get back in their car, it’s commandeered by a cop (Paul Sparks) who bellows “Police business,” takes over the wheel, and roars in pursuit of the cyclist. They eventually catch him, at which point the script adds “tasteless” to its repertoire. Gape-mouthed over what has just gone down — and regarded as murderers by witnesses whipping out cell phones — our hapless couple goes on the run.
With the cyclist’s phone in their possession.
A-ha, they quickly realize: a clue. Perhaps a way out of this mess.
Subsequent excursions into New Orleans’ mean streets involve encounters with various unsavory individuals. Anna Camp has fun as a trench-coated woman of mystery who attempts to torture information from Jibran with a pan of scalding bacon grease (and a horse). A bit later, our heroes break into an upper-story apartment, where a gaggle of college guys are busily stuffing glossy photographs into large manila envelopes.
Each stop grants Rae and Nanjiani a fresh opportunity to riff, before finding yet another clue that leads somewhere else. Everything ultimately climaxes — deliberate choice of words — at a bizarre, high-society gathering stolen from Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.
Class, raise your hands if you’ve already deduced that repeated peril — and hitherto untapped bursts of resourcefulness — will remind our beleaguered couple how much they truly love each other.
And if all this smacks of a certain TV reality show, that’s deliberate; early on, Jibran contemptuously dismisses programs such as The Amazing Race, while extolling the greater virtues of the serious documentary he’s been fine-tuning for years.
“Documentaries,” retorts Leilani, not one to miss an opening, “are just reality shows that nobody watches.”
That’s a funny line. Too bad there aren’t more like it.
At a (mercifully) brief 86 minutes, these lovebirds know when to get off the stage … by which time, yes, OK, Leilani and Jibran have become mildly endearing.
But only mildly.
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