Isn’t It Romantic
By James Davidson
In “Isn’t It Romantic”, young architect Natalie (played by Rebel Wilson) despises romantic-comedy (rom-com) movies and doesn’t believe that love exists for her. After getting mugged on the subway and knocking herself unconscious, she awakes to find that her life now resembles the rom-coms that she despises so much. Her extremely attractive boss, Blake, suddenly finds her attractive and “beguiling”. Her weed selling neighbor, Donny, has suddenly become the stereotypical “gay best friend”. Her best girlfriend at work, Whitney, has suddenly become her arch-enemy that hates her. And her secret admirer, Josh, who she is totally oblivious to, has started dating a “yoga ambassador” who is also a swimsuit model.
I hadn’t seen much about this movie but my wife convinced me that it would be a great movie for a Valentine’s Day date, so I looked up the trailer for it. After seeing the trailer, I was somewhat convinced. This movie looked to be a hilarious parody that poked fun of most rom-com tropes. Unfortunately, this film fell a little short of my expectations.
Rebel Wilson and the rest of the cast were hilarious and kept me laughing through most of the movie, so I did enjoy myself for the most part. The writing is what really let me down. It seemed to me that this movie became what it was attempting to make fun of. It didn’t totally embrace the parody paradigm. As a result, it becomes a stereotypical rom-com, exactly what this movie is supposed to be poking fun at.
The plot was very predictable, which I think was on purpose. But even after Natalie comes out of her “dream”, the ending of the movie still follows the typical rom-com stereotypes. Making the ending very predictable ruined the feel of the movie for me. I wish the writers would have embraced the parody aspect of the film. It would have made it fresh and more enjoyable to me. Instead this movie seemed a bit stale. It didn’t have anything that we haven’t seen in a million romantic movies. If I had not gone in thinking that this movie would be different than a typical rom-com, I would have had a lot more fun. This movie needed to decide if it wanted to be a parody or a rom-com, instead it becomes this weird in-between genre.
While the writing was disappointing, I thought the acting and cast almost redeemed the film. Led by Rebel Wilson and Liam Hemsworth, who plays her “dreamy boss” Blake; the cast and acting was hilarious. The jokes worked very well and I loved seeing Rebel Wilson singing and dancing in the musical numbers. Wilson and Hemsworth had a lot of scenes together and played off of each other hilariously. They had great comedic chemistry together and were a joy to watch.
While I had some problems with this movie, it was still an enjoyable date night movie. It was pretty funny and was fairly clean. It is rated PG-13 for language, some sexual material and a brief drug reference. It might not be appropriate for young children, but is a perfectly fine date night movie or even a girls-night-out movie. Just don’t expect much more than a typical romantic-comedy.
“Isn’t It Romantic” is enjoyable and a great date movie. Even though it is very predictable and doesn’t quite embrace being a parody as much as it should. It earns 2.5 out of 5 stars.
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