After hearing the crowd-pleasing success of its release in various film festivals at the start of the year, I instantly put a pin in this one and kept an eager eye on when the release date would be. Then to hear it was produced by Judd Apatow made it clear as to why it has done rather well.
It starts off with a pleasant and expected beginning. It had me smiling and chuckling a few times. But what I think won me over to giving it an exceptional rating was the highly original second act. The relationship between the characters involved in said act was interesting to watch and added the type of depth you just don't see in rom-coms.
If you read the full plot synopsis, it doesn't exactly sound like comedy gold. But what the director and his team do, is go down a route that keeps the light-hearted and witty comedy ball rolling.
The main characters played by Kumail Nanjiani and Zoe Kazan did a great job. Their relationship felt very believable and almost documentary-like.
But I think the couple that manage to steal it for me, is Ray Romano and Holly Hunter. It was not only great to see Ray Romano. But also in a really good film. I haven't seen him in like forever, and he was very entertaining to watch.
Also, there is a lot of great back-and-forth banter comedy from most of the supporting cast.
While the performances were very enjoyable, I think it is mainly thanks to the writing department. The script is most certainly the films strongest aspect. It is smart, witty and just plain funny. Even during some of the shifts in tone, the writers still manage to find a laugh in there.
I also liked that none of it fell into the over-the-top cliched moments that most films within this genre do. It manages to stick to its light-hearted tone throughout.
It's like this generations 'Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?'. But it also could be seen as a less quirky version of 'Me And Earl And The Dying Girl'.
While I really liked it, I cannot see it being up there in my best of the year list. That is mainly due to that this genre just does not compete with other films strong films from other genres that I prefer. So it's negatives are only due to my personal taste.
The strong aspects in a rom-com would be far inferior to say the positives from a sci-fi for example.
But forgetting all that, this is definitely the type of film that will feel very relatable these days, and to have such a well written script makes this even more of an important film to watch.
I probably wouldn't rave about it as much as some people did from the film festivals. But I found it be a very smart and consistently funny rom-com, and that is coming from someone who very rarely pays money to see those types of films on the big-screen.
It is great to find a great modern rom-com as most of my favourites are from the 50's and 60's.
Rating: 8/10
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