Single man seeks surrogate, finds true friendship, in a slyly seductive film
“Together Together” Rated: R for some sexual dialogue. Running time: 90 minutes. 666 (out of four)
“Together Together” tells the sweet but never saccharine story of two not-quite-misfits. Matt (Ed Helms from “The Office”) is a single, sweetly awkward 45-yearold app designer who is coming out of a failed eight-year relationship, and who wants a child. His signature tech achievement is a piece of smartphone software called, appropriately enough, Loner - though Lurker might be a better name for it, because it’s a little like Tinder, but without any actual dating: all swipe and no sex.
Anna (Patti Harrison of “Shrill”) is a 25-year-old barista. Ostracized by her family after she got pregnant as a teenager and gave the baby up for adoption, she’s looking to make some money to go to college by signing on with a surrogacy agency.
What starts out with a premise that sounds tailor-made for a cheesy meet-cute turns into something more eccentric and far more genuine: a story about the unforced friendship that develops between two people who come together for something purely transactional and discover an unexpected kind of love.
Believe me, this movie is not what you think - or even what that last sentence sounds like.
The film opens with Matt interviewing Anna, in a gently funny interaction that sets the quirky tone of the film, establishing the strange, slyly seductive appeal of what might be described as a platonic relationship dramedy - call it a rom-com, without the rom - which chiefly builds on the tentative but entirely real-seeming rapport between these two disarmingly charming geeks.
Helms brings some of the same dweeby energy of his “Office” prepster Andy, only subtler and more grounded. And Harrison so delightful in “Shrill” as the self-described “sociopath-adjacent” millennial office assistant Ruthie - tones down the snark to deliver a performance that’s vulnerable and affecting.
Written and directed by Nikole Beckwith, helming only her second feature since “Stockholm, Pennsylvania,” the film also boasts a great supporting cast: most notably Julio Torres as Anna’s jaded co-worker Jules, and Tig Notaro as a couples counselor whom Matt and Anna begin seeing. OK, so they’re not really a couple - they’re not together together, as Jules puts it, lending the film its title - but they’re not exactly alone alone either.
Of course, the film can’t entirely sidestep some overly familiar scenarios: crib-shopping together in a high-end baby boutique; picking out paint swatches for the nursery; participating in his-andhers support groups; Matt’s paternalistic monitoring of Anna’s diet and sex life; and multiple office visits with a wryly deadpan ultrasound technician (Sufe Bradshaw). Matt wants to know the baby’s gender; Anna doesn’t. To avoid referring to the unborn child as “it,” they settle on a gender-neutral nickname: Lamp.
That’s the kind of humor, such as it is, that “Together Together” traffics in. It isn’t laugh-out-loud funny. It simply zigs when you expect it to zag.
This is a small, simple story, free from emotional pyrotechnics and, mostly, false notes. It has something to say about the deeper meaning of alone-ness, without being pretentious. At heart, it’s the story of a fix-up: a double character study - complex, true and unpredictable - about two strangers brought together by a third, who hasn’t even been born yet.