Isn’t It Romantic (2019)

Todd Strauss-Schulson, who dissected slasher film tropes in 2015’s The Final Girls, gets his chance to take on another cliched film genre with the 1990s-era romantic comedy with Isn’t It Romantic, in which an unlucky-in-love single gal finds herself the “It Girl” in the middle of her own rom-com after taking a nasty conk to the head.  This one puts perennial comedic sidekick Rebel Wilson in the lead role, trying to put a new spin on the old formula by pitting someone with awareness on how that formula works in the center of the action, and someone who has disdain for how the machinations usually operate.

Wilson plays Natalie, working as an architect in New York City, though often marginalized by her peers at her firm as one of the administrative assistants who make copies and fetch coffee for the others a the board meetings. To make matters worse, she ends up getting mugged and assaulted in the subway, resulting in a loss of consciousness that finds her waking up in a too-nice hospital being catered to, and flirted with, by the too-handsome doctor there.  Her apartment is now three times the size and meticulously furnished, her neighbor now flamboyantly gay, and the hunky, wealthy client they’ve recently taken on at the firm now only has eyes for her. In short, she’s the star of her own romantic comedy, and the only person she can confide in that knowledge is her best friend at work, Josh (Adam Devine), who holds a secret crush for Natalie that she’s been too stuck in her low self esteem to see.

As you would expect from a film in which Rebel Wilson finally takes the spotlight, the humor in Isn’t It Romantic often runs broad and full of pratfalls, though it is tempered somewhat by the incisive qualities of the screenplay from TV veteran actress/writer Eric Cardillo, Dana Fox (a rom-com scribe who also worked on another Wilson vehicle with How to Be Single), and Katie Silberman (who co-produced How to Be Single).  It plays with those cliches (from pop tunes to music montages to chase climaxes) with kid gloves for the things we all know to be their flaws, while also embracing them for the things that most people who love them readily eat up.  In that way, the makers of the film like to play with their prey, but rather than devour it; they become friends with it, and the result is an endeavor that amuses in spots, but never quite owns the sassy satire it aspires to achieve wholly.  Rebel Wilson never quite owns the movie either, possibly because her character plays out like so many of her secondary performances, stuck somewhere between being likable and loathsome without getting us to want to be close enough to her to actually root her on the happiness.

Mileage will certainly vary on how much of this is amusing to viewers, with the target of the comedy mostly aiming straight at the demographics in the audience of those who regularly feast on ’90s staples either starring Julia Roberts, Meg Ryan, Reese Witherspoon, or Sandra Bullock.  Perhaps those who enjoyed the gimmicky comedies of the 1990s, like Groundhog Day and The Truman Show will also find a knowing familiarity with how this story-line begins to play out.  Even ’90s action movies gets a nod in the clever line, “This is like The Matrix for lonely women.”  The more on that ’90s-era pop culture wavelength you are, the more in tune you’ll likely be with what Isn’t it Romantic has to offer, but in the end, this anti-romantic comedy effort is meant much more for those who love living in that fantasy world in the course of a vapid feel-good movie rather than despise them for deviating into a comfortable but unrealistic sense of reality that most women want, but few, if any, could ever but dream to achieve.  Like most of the films it refers to, it’s pleasantly enjoyable, even those pleasures are consummately ephemeral.

Qwipster’s rating: B

MPAA Rated: PG-13 for language, some sexual material, and a brief drug reference
Running Time: 88 min.

Cast: Rebel Wilson, Liam Hemsworth, Adam Devine, Priyanka Chopra, Betty Gilpin, Brandon Scott Jones
Director:  Todd Strauss-Schulson
Screenplay: Erin Cardillo, Dana Fox, Katie Silberman

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