Romance that should’ve ended sooner
a NEW york-based romantic comedy that tries and fails to be an edgy, modern-day When Harry met Sally, Sleeping With Other People is not entirely devoid of charm and humour. Only mostly.
The leads are seasoned comic actor Jason Sudeikis and alison Brie, who will be familiar to fans of the hit TV drama mad men as Trudy, the prissy wife of awful Pete Campbell. They play Jake and Lainey, who meet at a clinic for sex addicts some 12 years after losing their virginity to one another in a college one-night stand.
They have both acquired plenty of emotional baggage since their college fling and as they gradually become best friends, writer-director Leslye Headland invites us to wonder, as if there’s the slightest doubt, whether they will shrug off the baggage and eventually become lovers.
The film is basically a comedy of modern sexual manners and there are a few genuine laughs along the way, facilitated by an engaging pair of lead performances: Brie and Sudeikis are both very good. moreover, with Will Ferrell and his anchorman collaborator adam Mckay both on board as producers, there’s an unsurprising slickness to it.
But you can have a surfeit of slickness. Headland’s dialogue is so relentlessly razorsharp that it keeps lacerating itself. Game Of Thrones gets a wise-cracking mention. So do screenwriter aaron Sorkin and Facebook founder mark Zuckerberg.
it’s all so self-consciously metropolitan, so determinedly up-to-the-minute, that even at a fairly concise hour and 41 minutes it seems too long. Sliced into episodes and dished up on TV, Sex and The City style, it might have worked better.