Director Jason Orley’s modestly entertaining little film is a rom-com spin on Hitchcock’s Strangers on a Train.
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| Alcohol, karaoke and bruised feelings are an unlikely backdrop as Peter (Charlie Day) and Emma (Jenny Slate) concoct an increasingly elaborate scheme to win back their ex-lovers. |
Two problems crop up, as this story unfolds.
Most notably, Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger’s script is quite uneven. During quieter moments of shared hopes/goals/commiseration between various pairs of characters, the dialogue is sincere, warm and heartfelt, and persuasively delivered by the actors. It’s easy to sympathize with them, and I suspect many viewers will experience quite a few pangs of been-there-felt-that.
Unfortunately, such moments are wholly at odds with stretches of overly broad, slapstick-style stupidity; it feels like two entirely different films were clumsily stitched together.
Or perhaps what began as a gently whimsical, reasonably serious look at the extremes to which jilted lovers might go, was “smutted up” in order to secure an R rating that upper-echelon meddling hands felt would make the film more marketable.
Either way, the result is uneven.
The other problem concerns real-world empathy. If we’re expected to bond with these characters — and the actors work reasonably well to ensure that — then this scenario, by its very nature, means that somebody (several somebodies?) will wind up hurt.
(Even in classic screwball comedies such as 1937’s The Awful Truth, I always felt sorry for the guy — in this case, Ralph Bellamy — who gets left behind when Cary Grant and Irene Dunne kiss and make up.)
Emma (Jenny Slate) and Peter (Charlie Day) work in the same building, but don’t know each other; they chance to bond when both are dumped by their respective partners — Noah (Scott Eastwood) and Anne (Gina Rodriguez) — on the same weekend. After all, misery does love company.
But misery blossoms into indignation when, via social media, Emma and Peter discover that their exes have moved happily — and rapidly — into new relationships: Noah with Ginny (Clark Backo), Anne with Logan (Manny Jacinto). During a subsequent pity party fueled by wounded pride and too much alcohol, Emma and Peter concoct a plan to sabotage these new relationships, reasoning — rather optimistically — that Noah and Anne then will come to their senses and rush back into appropriate arms.
What could possibly go wrong?
Plenty, of course.
It’s blindingly obvious how this narrative ultimately should conclude; the question is whether Orley and his scripters will let that happen. Although Slate and Day are an awkward fit in their early shared scenes — Day tries much too hard, which often is an issue with his performances — they soon settle into a comfortable groove, as Emma and Peter spend more time together, sharing each fresh detail about their respective schemes.
Logan is a pretentious, frustrated would-be playwright reduced to directing plays at the middle school where Anne also teaches. Emma, pretending to be a theater geek, volunteers to help as a member of the tech crew for an upcoming production of Little Shop of Horrors, in order to flirt shamelessly with him, in an effort to seduce him away from Anne.
Peter, recognizing that he couldn’t possible seduce Ginny, instead hires Noah — a personal trainer — to help get him into better shape. Along the way, he’ll maneuver to become Noah’s best friend, thereby being in a position to subtly bad-mouth Ginny while attempting to rekindle Noah’s interest in Emma.
As amusing as it is to watch Day navigate a serious exercise routine — and it is quite funny — the clumsy manner in which Peter awkwardly pokes into Noah’s personal life, and the speed with which Noah nonetheless accepts this nosy geek as a best bud, is wholly unbelievable. Once they are best buds, Day and Eastwood have a reasonably credible rapport, but even then we wonder why a guy as happily centered as Noah would give even a second glance to a repressed nerd like Peter.
At its best moments, Aptaker and Berger’s script displays shrewd insight regarding the complicated nature of relationships. Anne, believing she wanted more excitement in her life, broke up with Peter because she blamed his complacency for “holding her back,” when in fact she doesn’t take responsibility for her own lack of follow-through.
Emma, stuck in a dead-end job and still sharing her former college apartment with a rotating roster of progressively younger students, really was holding Noah back; she needs some sort of catalyst to jump-start the process of becoming a better version of herself.
Some genuinely sweet moments emerge along the way, most belonging to Slate. During the play’s tech rehearsal, at low emotional ebb, an absent student prompts Logan — believing her earlier lies regarding theater experience — to hastily use Emma as a temporary stand-in for the lead role. What we expect to be a comic catastrophe blossoms into an unexpectedly powerful, aw-shucks revelation.
Emma also bonds smoothly with Trevor (Luke David Blumm), a troubled boy whose outward hardness and ’tude mask the unhappiness of a kid going through tough times at home. It’s a nice sidebar relationship — another touch of real-world credibility — and I wish it were explored more deeply.
But such endearing touches are sabotaged by overly burlesque sequences, most particularly an alcohol- and drug-fueled evening enjoyed by Peter and Noah at a notorious nightclub, and the aftermath when three cuties take them home. This goes on and on and on, getting progressively dumber.
Emma’s suggestion that she, Logan and Anne enjoy a threesome — reasoning that the latter will be repelled by the idea, which will dismay him — similarly turns awkward when they accept. Slate, Rodriguez and Jacinto can’t sell any of this sequence, from the initial proposal to its eventual execution; all three actors are ill at ease the entire time. (I grant that’s the point, in terms of scripted intent, but there’s a difference between playing a character who looks uncomfortable, and genuinely being uncomfortable.)
Cinematographer Brian Burgoyne and production designer Michael Perry make excellent use of Georgia’s Atlanta setting, getting maximum romantic mileage out of locales such as Peachtree Center, North Druid Hills neighborhoods, and the luxurious, 185-acre Piedmont Park. Siddhartha Khosla’s score, dominated by gentle piano themes, also is a nice touch.
Aptaker and Berger bring their saga to a clever conclusion — I do love the final shot — but getting there is a disappointingly bumpy ride.
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