Amid game of modern love, ‘Single’ takes break, with mixed results
“How to Be Single” is an unromantic romantic comedy, which makes it something different. Yet it feels just like any other romantic comedy, only with the romance missing, so it’s not exactly something new. The movie is an attempt to adapt an old form to new times, and the result is interesting but a little off; honest for long stretches and then phony in the most obvious way.
Still, for at least an hour, “How to Be Single” is a pleasurable experience, with its brutal and coarse humor and the sense it gives, false or not, of a dispatch from the front lines of modern courtship. Modern love looks really confusing, rules within rules, all conspiring to keep people unattached.
At the center of the movie is Dakota Johnson, best known as the star of “Fifty Shades of Grey” and the only thing that makes the prospect of a sequel to that film even bearable. Johnson has a magnetism on screen that’s hard to define, a look that changes from scene to scene, shot to shot. Her line readings are odd but true, and her emotions are close to the surface. It’s downright amazing how well she can enliven the film’s pedestrian writing, as she did in “Fifty Shades.” Watching her in a breakup scene, you can almost feel physically, just by watching her, what her character is going through.
She plays Alice, who has decided that she and her boyfriend need to take a break from exclusivity. She wants to know what it’s like to be on her own. To make this temporary break more real, she relocates to New York and moves in with her older sister (Leslie Mann), an obstetrician. She also makes friends with co-worker Robin (Rebel Wilson), a blackout drunk who has a new partner every night.
“How to Be Single” operates on a wide canvas, covering the yearnings and behaviors of a number of characters. There’s Alison Brie as Lucy, a fussy — and funny — control freak, who has developed an algorithm for finding a love match online; and Tom (Anders Holm), a bartender, com- mitted only to staying uncommitted and having a succession of lovers.
The weakness of most romantic comedies is that we know early on how all the characters will pair off in the end. “How to Be Single” avoids that, and for a while that seems like a strength. And then, curiously and unexpectedly, what starts off as a strength becomes a problem.
The truth sinks in after about an hour, with questions slowly rising to the surface: Why are we watching this, anyway? What is at stake? Who cares? Yes, Alice feels a bit morose that she doesn’t have a boyfriend. But if we don’t have a strong feeling about who that boyfriend should be, does it really matter if she meets someone today or tomorrow or next year? By removing the one acceptable and identifiable love interest, the movie also removes all urgency from the narrative.
The filmmakers grasp this, and after an hour, the symptoms of desperation kick in — fake arguments between Alice and Robin and randomly occurring montages to the accompaniment of drippy pop music. The montages are meant to compress information and connect disparate story elements; instead, they only emphasize the structural clumsiness and the lack of any real consequence. “How to Be Single” is over a half hour before it’s over.