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.
