LAUGH STORY
Rom-com sendup comes ‘Together’ nicely
Back in 2001, director David Wain and his writing partner Michael Showalter gathered their funniest buddies — some famous (Paul Rudd), some not yet (Amy Poehler) — and made the awesomely anarchic camp spoof “Wet Hot American Summer.”
Now they’ve reunited much of the gang for a new parody, in hopes of taking down an even bigger target: the romantic comedy.
As the double-entendre title “They Came Together” suggests, Wain and Showalter just want to have a good time at the expense of rom-com clichés (and the women who love them).
The filmmakers mock every date-movie device they can think of, starting with the opening scene: New Yorkers Joel (Rudd) and Molly (Poehler) are out to dinner with squabbling friends (Bill Hader and Ellie Kemper), reminiscing about how they met.
Then we flash back to a year earlier, when Molly and Joel bump into each other on Halloween night and take an instant dislike to each other. As it happens, they’re heading to the same party, where friends have planned to set them up. What’s worse, they soon discover that she owns the adorable Upper West Side candy store his company wants to demolish. With the help of cynical siblings and wisecracking BFFs, they finally wind up together, enjoying a well-deserved montage before hitting some obstacles in the form of eccentric parents and seductive exes.
Rudd and Poehler are a delight together; she hits the broader gags with endearing enthusiasm, and he tweaks his own experience as a romantic leading man with deadpan irony. Christopher Meloni, Michael Ian Black, Kenan Thompson, Cobie Smulders, Melanie Lynskey and Ed Helms are also on hand, if underused, for some silly support.
Most of the laughs are merely amusing, not hilarious, and there aren’t many surprises in the selfaware script. But that’s okay; the fun, really, is in the familiarity of the formula. Unless you happen to be Meg Ryan, Katherine Heigl or Cameron Diaz, you’re likely to find Wain’s rom-com vision a lot more entertaining than the one Hollywood keeps churning out.
eweitzman@nydailynews.com