☆☆☆½
Here's a happy Rorschach test of a movie, which will reflect exactly what you already feel about romantic comedies. Do you instinctively smile at the far-fetched nonsense of Notting Hill or My Best Friend's Wedding? Or do pop-song montage sequences set your skin crawling? Isn't It Romantic will support your view, either way.
It pretends to have a sort of superior, snobbish disdain for rom-com contrivances, which gives Isn't It Romantic a slight case of schizophrenia -- but its sunny disposition makes it, well, adorable.
Rebel Wilson stars as Natalie, who grows up with a boozy mother (Jennifer Saunders) and a crisis of self-worth. She designs parking structures at the world's glummest architectural firm, and frets over the way her size and disposition make her invisible. Thwacking herself on the head, she wakes up in a New York that has transformed into the picture-perfect romantic comedy she disdains, wooed by an impossibly handsome billionaire (Liam Hemsworth).
Wilson's affable grouchiness is counter-balanced by the endlessly sunny nature of her co-worker Josh (Adam Devine) and a delightful production design. For a while, Isn't It Romantic is like the Airplane! of rom-coms, throwing out every joke it can think of and landing most of the punchlines. Inevitably, it settles into a plot that is precisely the movie it appears to mock -- but there's a tiny joy in realizing that the characters and situations work just as well here (or, if you're of that mind, as poorly, I guess) as they ever have.
Viewed February 22, 2019 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks
1935
It pretends to have a sort of superior, snobbish disdain for rom-com contrivances, which gives Isn't It Romantic a slight case of schizophrenia -- but its sunny disposition makes it, well, adorable.
Rebel Wilson stars as Natalie, who grows up with a boozy mother (Jennifer Saunders) and a crisis of self-worth. She designs parking structures at the world's glummest architectural firm, and frets over the way her size and disposition make her invisible. Thwacking herself on the head, she wakes up in a New York that has transformed into the picture-perfect romantic comedy she disdains, wooed by an impossibly handsome billionaire (Liam Hemsworth).
Wilson's affable grouchiness is counter-balanced by the endlessly sunny nature of her co-worker Josh (Adam Devine) and a delightful production design. For a while, Isn't It Romantic is like the Airplane! of rom-coms, throwing out every joke it can think of and landing most of the punchlines. Inevitably, it settles into a plot that is precisely the movie it appears to mock -- but there's a tiny joy in realizing that the characters and situations work just as well here (or, if you're of that mind, as poorly, I guess) as they ever have.
Viewed February 22, 2019 -- ArcLight Sherman Oaks
1935
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