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.
