Riddle me this – what do you do with Rebel Wilson? I love her. We love her. So, yay! But she owns every scene she’s in and her shtick doesn’t work in the confines of growth or nuance. You juxtapose her with Dakota Johnson and I don’t care how many Shades of Gray the latter has seen; when Rebel Wilson is on screen, it’s “The Rebel Wilson Show,” your guests today are that girl from “Community,” Judd Apatow’s wife, and an unhooked bra. Good luck getting more attention than the host.
How to Be Single explores the lives of four single women: Paralegal Alice (Johnson), Dr. Meg (Leslie Mann), barfly Lucy (Alison Brie) and Rebel Wilson. We are concerned about the relationships of the first three. Rebel shows up merely to thrust Alice into irresponsible drunken floosy single life. Alice recently made the disastrous “let’s take a break” move from college boyfriend, Josh (Nicholas Braun). Somebody forgot to tell Alice that living in NYC on your own requires a great deal more than first-year-out-of-college salary. Oh yeah, this is a movie.
Lucy is depressed because the venue hasn’t lent itself yet to marital bliss. She sums it up in a peanuts metaphor with new-partner-every-night bartender Tom (Anders Holm). This is a seriously depressing conversation. I mean, yeah, her standards are high, but if Alison Brie –on a ring hunt no less– can’t find somebody reasonable in a metro of eight million people, what chance do you have? Meanwhile, single Dr. Meg has convinced herself that a baby is exactly what she needs; man be damned. Of course, no sooner does she take the sperm donor plunge when Jake Lacy (a.k.a. “Peefarter”) shows up.
How to Be Single loves these four women so much, it couldn’t stand to see them hurt. So first it lets them have fun meaningless adventures mostly involving drunken revelry and sex. Rebel introduces the concept of “drink number” when commenting on Dakota’s pubes. Don’t worry, it was really funny, the pubes that is. Drink number – the number of combined drinks a couple will have before sex MUST happen? A little scary and irresponsible as thoughts go. Do you really want to encourage increasingly drunk guys to reason: “all I have to do is get to drink # __ and she HAS to have sex with me?” In this stage, How to Be Single introduces minor heartache – Ken is too young for Meg (duh), Alice is ready to take Josh back, but he’s now taken, Lucy met Mr. Not Right. Awwwwwww.
Then, of course, the problems have to get bigger, but How to Be Single isn’t prepared to go there. Seriously, this movie cuts off true misery at the knees whenever it surfaces. Hey! That guy makes our gal unhappy! Quick! Cut the scene and lose him for ½ hour. How to Be Single is fully
prepared to go teeth-gnashing-and-unfriending level relationship unhappy, but not at all prepared to go alone-with-gallon-of-ice-cream-and-wedding-crashing unhappy. And, of course, Rebel Wilson remains Rebel Wilson the whole time, constantly passing “Go” and collecting 200 new boytoys.
I’m not sure if the unwillingness to go full Fatal Attraction is good or bad for this film. In a story-telling sense, it cheapens the plot and the reality, but we do like these women and we don’t want to see a full implosion so in a way, the kid glove treatment id preferable. However, I don’t think this is a great film for actual single women – at best, it encourages very reckless behavior; at worst, it’s fairly depressing how needy the players seem to be. You want to make an empowerment film about being single? Stop having all the women chase companionship.
Leslie, Dakota, Rebel and Brie
Living alone in New York City
Who needs a man? (Except for the sex)
Apparently all, in certain respects
Brie needs a fella who checks all the boxes
Still time, Ally, no matter what clock says
Leslie needs somebody to father her child
A gent just like baby, tender and mild
Dakota needs a man, and strings along three
More of a catch than I would guess she
Rebel is the outlier; she’s good on her own
And thank goodness for all the frenzy she’s sown
Rated R, 110 Minutes
D: Christian Ditter
W: Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein and Dana Fox
Genre: Modern dating insanity
Type of person most likely to enjoy this film: Coupled women with fond memories of being single
Type of person least likely to enjoy this film: Actual single women
