Today's Review: How to Be Single

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How to Be Single - recensie

A typical romantic comedy for Valentine's Day, I expect the concept was here. But actually, How to Be Single isn't quite so typical. It just plays with typical characters in typical situations searching for typical love. And atypically, not finding it. Because the ultimate message is that you need to get to know yourself and your own desires before you can adequately satisfy or be satisfied by someone else's. And to do that, you need to know how to be self reliable. Like the titel says, how to be single. Seems easy enough, hardly a novel life lesson, but not for these women who prove blind to this notion for far too long. Which also hinders the comedic element quite a bit, and thus the level on which this movie can be enjoyed.

Revolving about the romantics of four different women - plus several men, who all are relegated to the side, since the target audience of course is female - How to Be Single follows their desperate attempts to hook up with members of the opposite sex (quite a conservative approach, there's no other options that characterize our contemporary multisexual society explored here). They suck at it. Young Alice just got out of a relationship and doesn't know how to rely on her own in the busy night life of New York City. Fortunately party animal Robin is willing to teach her, but she specializes in one-night stands, so her advice proves to be of little use for something more serious, nor should her wild tactics be considered exemplary at all. Alice's sister Meg wants a child, but due to her busy career she has no time for a man. Does she have time for a baby then? Not really, it seems. Lucy keeps looking for any available men online, rather than seeing the obvious partner right in front of her. Her story and character are sadly underdeveloped, which is made more regrettable by the fact that this also means underusing Alison Brie's considerable comedic talents. It would have been better if her story line had been eliminated altogether to make room for the others, but since the modern notion of looking for true love on social media is her angle, it was kept in so the movie could appear to say a thing or two about digital dating, which it hardly does.

In terms of comedy, How to Be Single also proves a letdown. The characters of Meg and especially Alice are bland and naive and provide mostly predictable melodrama. It's up to Rebel Wilson's Robin to ensure the laughs, and at least she succeeds admirably at that. In fact, the movie seems to drag and drone on whenever she's off-screen for too long. But when she's involved, the atmosphere quickly gets more appreciable. Makes you wonder whether a movie dealing entirely with her character would not have been preferable. But then, films about loose female characters with questionable dating ethics and a taste for alcoholic indulgence screwing their way through the male portion of humanity are hardly unique. Then again, neither are mosaic romance pictures like this flick. And there's better examples of those available than How to Be Single.

Today's Mini-Reviews: Zombies, zombies everywhere!

World War Z: ***/*****, or 7/10

Huge big budget blockbuster adaptation, albeit loosely, of the Max Brooks novel of the same name. More serious in tone, the film explores the consequences of a viral pandemic that turns its victims into zombies, only driven by the urge to infect more people. A star vehicle for Brad Pitt, World War Z follows an ex-UN employee who is blackmailed by his former superiors into tracking down the origin of the plague in exchange for the guarantee his wife and children are protected from the terrors of the outside world. Unfortunately, it turns out it's not so easy to pinpoint just where the virus originated, necessitating him to travel around the globe whilst following various breadcrumbs in hopes of finding an answer, and if possible, a cure. Of course, this results in an array of close calls with ravenous zombies in various major cities, including New York, Philadelphia and Jeruzalem. The movie incorporates both close encounters with only a few zombies as well as major zombie offensives against large human populations as seen through Pitt's eyes. It's the former that make for the most suspenseful edge-of-your-seat moments, while the latter gobble up the vast majority of the FX budget, as we see zombie armies attacking helicopters and city walls in force. Such scenes look grandiose and work equally well as further examples of ever active post 9/11 paranoia, but ultimately feel hollow compared to Pitt's more personal experiences up close with the creepy undead. However, in those instances, these zombies just don't appear as frightening or disturbing as those of previous zombie flicks. In fact, if you're watching the TV-show The Walking Dead on a regular basis, World War Z offers little you have not seen before (save for zombie attacks on a bigger scope) and certainly isn't as poignant as a parable showcasing the failure of humans to work together for mutual survival, nor delivers it any moments of intense horror and gore that can match that show's contents. As an exploration of the legitimacy of our fears for pandemics, this movie also proves less effective as more scientific accurate fare the likes of Contagion: think of it more as the silly popcorn variety of that more intelligent type of flick. In addition, Brad Pitt is much too big a movie star to convincingly play the everyman out for basic survival and answers in a world overrun by the living dead. A less well known actor would have worked better for this movie's purposes, but in this day and age of ever increasing numbers of Hollywood flops, studios are afraid to make summer movies that cannot benefit from having big names to draw in audiences. World War Z witnessed its fair share of production problems, including a need for drastic rewrites and 20 million dollar reshoots of its entire third act. To the credit of those involved, you wouldn't think this film experienced such obstacles, as it has a fairly solid ending – including a surprising method of avoiding zombie contact – that still leaves ample room for an unavoidable sequel or two.

Warm Bodies: ****/*****, or 7/10

Zombies admittedly are having a big break on the silver screen this year. While World War Z is the sort of epic flick meant for the usual audiences blockbuster movies are made for, the zom-romcom Warm Bodies should attract crowds looking for more unusual horrific fare, and even – gods willing – teenage girls that want to fill the gap left by the finale of the Twilight movies by exploring similar themed films. Fortunately, the fact this movie combines thematic elements from the horror genre with all the qualities of romance is as far as the parallel between Twilight and Warm Bodies ought to be drawn, as the latter is a delightful off-beat comedy that hopefully will stay a one-shot instead of being milked for many more movies to come. The film follows R (Nicholas Hoult of X-Men: First Class and Jack the Giant Slayer fame), a teenage zombie male who does what zombies usually do: incoherently move about the place looking for people to eat, either alone or in a pack with his undead friends. One day he happens upon the brains of a living teenage boy, and after devouring them finds he is attracted to his girlfriend Julie (Teresa Palmer), the sole survivor of the zombie attack that claimed her boyfriend's life. Hiding her from the other living corpses, R soon displays amorous behavior towards her, or attempts at such as good as any dead boy could make, and because of these sudden feelings appears to regain his past humanity slowly but surely. Eventually the plot allows for a certain degree of romance between the pair which is developed compellingly enough to make it rise above its ludicrous premise. The problem the fledgling lovers face is how to overcome the prejudices dominant in a world where one group in society aims to eat the other. Matters are complicated by the fact Julie's father (John Malkovich) is the stern and uncompromising leader of the human survivors, while the rise of a subspecies of zombies named 'Bonies', zombies so far gone they have lost every shred of humanity and form a danger to both humans and regular zombies, also is cause for concern. Can R and Julie's mutual love for each other bridge the differences between both groups in time for man and dead man to overcome their hatred and unite against their common foe? As the movie draws towards its close, the plot focuses more on action and the expected preachy messages, but it's the first half of the movie that makes for a wonderfully funny viewing experience totally worth your while as R, via voice-over, details his dreary everyday life, illustrating a zombie's daily routine to hilarious results. While people who might fear the love affair between live girl and dead boy is not convincingly carried through, they're in for a nice surprise. In fact, it turns out there's not so much difference between the awkward experiences of young love as seen through a dead boy's eyes as there is from a living one. Few guys who tried to hit on girls in their teen years won't recall similar instances of acting odd in front of the opposite sex that made them wish they were dead, right?