Slate, Day charm in warmhearted rom-com
If you’re looking for a post-dinner, new streamable rom-com to add to your Valentine’s Day evening itinerary, you could do worse than I Want You Back. Featuring the always appealing Jenny Slate and Charlie Day, the film hews close to standard rom-com tropes, but offers up just enough surprises and engaging performances to keep it from feeling too tired.
Slate’s Emma and Day’s Peter meet while crying in their workplace stairwell after recent break ups (that an Atlanta office building would house both an orthodontist’s office (Emma’s employer) and an entire retirement home (Peter’s employer) seems sort of odd, but I digress). They bond in their shared misery, and sooner than you can say “That will never work,” they’ve devised a plan to win their exes back. Emma will seduce Logan (Manny Jacinto), the drama teacher new boyfriend of Anne (Gina Rodriguez), Peter’s ex, and Peter will befriend Noah (Scott Eastwood), Emma’s fitness guru ex, with the goal of convincing Noah of Emma’s worth, and breaking up Noah’s relationship with new paramour Ginny (Clark Backo).
The expected madcap hijinks ensue, with some scenes garnering a mild chuckle or two. But the beauty of the film is that just when you think you know exactly where it’s heading, it actually takes an unexpected turn, and leaves us wondering if tried and true rom-com cliches might actually be abandoned. Without giving too much away, suffice to say that this slightly off track move is enough to help the picture become more than just another carbon copy, run-of-the-mill meet cute story. Though it does borrow a bit from When Harry Met Sally (Ginny even makes pies, which seems like an unapologetic homage to Nora Ephron’s “She makes 3,500 pies a week!?” line from WHMS), the film is cute and charming enough to make its more predictable segments palatable. And, interestingly, one of its best elements is actually a side story about Emma’s bonding with an unhappy 12-year-old (Luke David Blumm), whose parents are going through their own rough patch. Slate and Blumm have an authentic, believable rapport, and their scenes are some of the movie’s best.
Working from a script by This is Us and Love, Simon scribes Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker, Jason Orley, who also put a unique spin on the coming of age genre in 2019’s Big Time Adolescence, directs I Want You Back with the sort of light, warm touch that you can’t get too angry about, even when the picture tilts toward the more obvious. The ending, in particular, is almost too over the top, with its head slapping circle back to some earlier dialogue. Slate, Day, Rodriguez, Eastwood, and Jacinto all seem to be having such a great time, though, that getting annoyed at any of them for some of these more cheesy moments just feels like being a rom-com Scrooge. So open the wine, break out the chocolates, curl up with your favorite Valentine, and lose yourself in this story of two people making mostly ill-advised but always laugh-worthy mistakes as they try to find the love they deserve.
—————————-
I Want You Back is now available on Amazon Prime.
