‘How to be Single’: This generation’s ‘Love Actually’?
Leslie Mann as Meg in “How to be Single.”
Dakota Johnson as naive Alice and Rebel Wilson as worldly Robin in “How to be Single.”
Alice (Dakota Johnson) and Meg (Leslie Mann), left, confront Robin (Rebel Wilson) in “How to be Single.”
Welcome to glitzy New York City! Everything here is so exciting and trendy! Everyone is gorgeous with cool apartments! The parties are always happening, and no one really works! Every transitional shot between scenes is accompanied by the latest earworm! Ugh.
But the script for “How to be Single,” based on the book by Liz Tuccillo, tries to overcome these initial eye-rolling depictions of everything and everyone in NYC being so amazingly awesome. It also tries to inject some real-world modern relationships into its Mad-Libs format, and for that, I’m grateful. Although it still suffers from its own stereotypes, seriously, mad props for trying to break the mold.
Everything else about the movie’s production is pretty pedestrian, focusing mainly on the characters themselves, and the tangled webs they weave.
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Firstly, I wouldn’t call this a romantic comedy, though it features both romantic and comedic elements. At best it’s a dramedy, albeit one whose trailer plays up the comedic talents of Rebel Wilson as Robin, the Party Girl. If anyone is trying to teach naïve Alice (Dakota Johnson) how to be single, it’s her; and most of her one-liners are featured in the trailer.
Alice is on a self-imposed break from Josh (Jake Lacy) her boyfriend of four years. She’s off to a new job in NYC to find herself, and feel what it’s like to be single before settling down. After meeting coworker Robin and being introduced to the exciting nightlife of one night stands, Alice accumulates some dating history of her own.
Meanwhile her older sister Meg (Leslie Mann) is a successful but single doctor who opted for a career over family. Although she delivers babies all day, she’s not interested in having them, as she describes in a mostly negative litany to the captive audience in her delivery room. Again, props for showing successful, single, childless women … but then why make them unhappy with their choices? Why make all of the reasons why they’ve made their way down this road chock-full of negative motivation? And why change her mind so quickly and easily?
CRITIC’S RATING: Two and a half stars
MPAA RATING: R for sexual content and strong language throughout. 110 minutes.
STARRING: Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson, Leslie Mann, Damon Wayans Jr., Anders Holm, Nicholas Braun, Jake Lacy, Jason Mantzoukas, Alison Brie
BEHIND THE SCENES: Directed by Christian Ditter. Written by Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein and Dana Fox (screenplay), Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein (screen story), and Liz Tuccillo (book).
TRIVIA FROM IMDb: Dan Stevens was originally cast, but dropped out to work on Beauty and the Beast (2017). This will be Dakota Johnson and Nicholas Brauns’ third movie together.
Furthermore, why make the only person who seems happy to be Robin, the one who is obnoxious, shallow, oblivious and friendless? Alice only gets lost in her newfound sexual freedom, seemingly subject to the wind. She quickly beds sleazy bar owner Tom (Anders Holm, whom Hollywood is trying to force-feed us as leading hunk. When he became A Thing I’ll never know), who also has some advice for her regarding how to be single, as does her sister, Meg.
But this isn’t just Alice’s story, it’s also Lucy’s story (Alison Brie), a gorgeous woman who is amazingly unspoken for in NYC. But that might be because she is crazy-picky, using online dating sites and algorithms to find The One, but all she gets is series of first dates. Again, the script avoids some of the typical stuff we’ve all come to expect, but it ends up succumbing to the very pitfalls it was desperately trying to avoid. If anything really torpedoes “How to be Single,” it is that sense of desperation to not be just like everything else that seems forced and fake in spots, and too weak to stand in others, caving to cliché eventually.
Its cast o’ thousands doesn’t help. There are a lot of balls in the air, and many of them seem familiar, like a rewrite of “Love, Actually.” In addition to Alice, Josh, Robin, Meg, Lucy and Tom (who all have their own, sometimes intertwining storylines), Damon Wayans Jr. plays David, a successful (naturally — there are no poor people in NYC) businessman and widower (of course) who has an adorable daughter that he lives for, but he isn’t ready for a relationship. All-American boy-next-door Jake Lacy also shows up as Ken (I swear his name is Ken, like the doll) who is after Meg, even though she’s convinced she’s too old for him and she’s already pregnant by in-vitro fertilization. Jason Mantzoukas plays George, an offline interest of Lucy’s, and that’s not to mention the various coworkers and one nighters in between. That’s a lot to keep track of and amazingly, they all end up at the same party in the end for the messy climactic scene.
Even so, it might have all been okay if it had stayed its own course into the Brave New World of actual modern relationships, but in the end, cliché rules the day.
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