"How to Be Single" - Review

Or In Other Words: "How to Be a Vapid Mess"

Ready for a jumbled rant ladies and gentlemen?

Oh boy. This was a tough one to get through. Granted, I am not the target audience, but I can recognize a good movie and enjoy it regardless of genre. I love every genre, or to put it more simply, I love movies. I love all movies. Well, all movies that are good. I have sat through so called "chick flicks" and "rom coms" and thoroughly enjoyed myself. I have a soft spot for some sappy sentimental romantic stuff. I cried during The Notebook and I cried harder than my girlfriend at the time. And during the nearly perfect Her. I am not ashamed. That being said, How To Be Single is a giant piece of grating garbage. It sells itself as being a genre trope defying female power movie. It is not that. It falls victim to every cliche in the book, even some from other books that this movie does not even belong in. This would be all well and fine if it was at least entertaining. Entertaining it is not. It is a bloated mess of script full of characters whose sole purpose is to annoy and alternate between sleepwalking through lines and screaming every word.

I knew I was in trouble when the movie opened with narration straight from a Twilight style romance novel from Dakota Johnson. This brings me to the biggest offense the movie commits. Dakota Johnson has zero screen presence. Her narration was probably edited so yawns could be removed between words. There is no energy or life to her performance. Coming off her debut in Fifty Shades of Grey last year, it is almost as if she believes her "cute" factor is enough to carry a lead role in a film. All her character does is make puppy dog eyes at every character and gasp whenever Rebel Wilson says something crazy and/or random.

Speaking of Rebel Wilson, she does not fare much better. She at least puts her all into every movie she is in. I actually life the original Pitch Perfect and found her quite funny. Her performance reminded me of Melissa McCarthy in Bridesmaids with her range of being the silly character but still having definable character traits that allow her some depth to draw from. There is none of that in How To Be Single. While it is admirable to see a woman in a movie be so confident in herself, the movie seems to think that being a "strong independent woman" means being a sex crazy, abusive, careless, selfish human being. Because of this, the movie actually paints a really negative picture of female culture. Each main character is either really cutesy and vapid, crazy, controlling, or desperate to be a mother even though she is actually sort of unstable. Yeah. I actually described each of these main characters.

Even if these characters were likable, this script has no idea what to do with them. It meanders along and throws everything at the wall. It will follow a character for a while and then completely drop them for a good 30 minutes before coming back to them in some completely unrelated situation later. Instead of creating witty jokes, it relies on incredibly obvious dick jokes and characters screaming random syllables resembling words at every second. Instead of creating a good joke for a silly hook-up scene, they just insert the Harlem Shake song into the soundtrack to compensate for the lack of humor; a song that outlived its ironic existence within two weeks of it being a meme. The tone even lurches around like it does not know what to be. For example, during one baffling sequence in the movie, the main character is completely obsessed with this guy she met earlier and they have a cute interaction (which goes against the How to Be Single angle huh?) and then suddenly we see a title card that says '3 Months Later' and it suddenly becomes a scene with that same guy screaming at the main character about how she is not meant to replace his dead wife and be a mother for his child. It is an insane tone flop and it left everyone in the theater baffled and uncomfortable.

Why am I still talking about this? It really does not matter what I say. The target audience will still go to see it. So when I say that this is a disrespectful film for women that does not know what it is or WHEN TO END (there is so little structure to this thing that it just keeps limping along until it finally dies), I will be completely ignored. It is sad that a movie like this will get an audience and studio backing, but a wonderful movie like Mistress America has gone completely under the radar and will not be seen again. Such is Hollywood film-making and American movie audiences I guess.

The only thing keeping me from giving me an F other than the fact that I did not expect too much was one moment involving Alison Brie that made me chuckle. I also just like Alison Brie. (Jeff and Annie for life am I right Community fans?)

Oh, and if this review sounds like it is jumbled and all over the place, guess what? It is intentional. This is completely unedited and written within 15 minutes. Just like this movie's script. Go figure.

Save your money.

Grade: D-.