Friends rehash that just ain’t funny
How To Be Single (15) Verdict: Spectacularly unoriginal ★★✩✩✩
THERE is nothing in this feebly derivative comedy about single women in New York — no plotline, no gag, no twist, no philosophical reflection about love — that has not been done better in the TV series Friends or Sex And The City.
Nor, for that matter, does any New York romcom cliche go unchecked.
Rockefeller Center ice rink at Christmas, tick. St Patrick’s Day parade, tick. Picnic in Central Park, tick. The obligatory fireescape scene. It’s all there.
Dakota Johnson, Leslie Mann, Alison Brie and Rebel Wilson star as four singletons either making the most of what they have, or lamenting what they’re missing. The most engaging of them is Alice, played by Johnson.
She breaks up with her long-term boyfriend on the basis that she wants to see what life is like away from cosy coupledom. But then, predictably enough, as soon as he finds sex elsewhere, she yearns for him back.
Her older sister Meg (Mann), meanwhile, is an obstetrician who feels she can live without a man, but not without a baby. Then there’s Lucy (Brie), who is desperate for Mr Right.
And finally, the wildly promiscuous Robin — Wilson, doing her standard wacky party-girl routine, and half the time forgetting to act. Maybe it’s just me but, increasingly, I find that a little bit of Rebel Wilson goes a very long way.
There are one or two nice moments, but actual references in the script to Friends and Sex And The City show just how self-consciously this film — based on a book by one of the SATC writers — is tripping along in the footsteps of those vastly superior comedies.
The director, Christian Ditter, has said that he wanted to make something modern and funny and fresh. He failed.