How To Be Single Review

Certificate – 15

Directed by – Christian Ditter

Starring – Dakota Johnson; Rebel Wilson; Alison Brie; Leslie Munn; Anders Holm; Jake Lacy; Jason Mantzoukas and Nicholas Braun.

Running Time – 110 minutes (1 hour and 50 minutes)

★★½

I like romantic comedies, there’s nothing wrong with that gents, give me anything Richard Curtis has directed or give me a good love story in a film like Shaun of the Dead or even Deadpool. However, in recent years rom-com's have sort of fallen off a cliff with the only two exceptions being Simon Pegg’s ‘Man Up’ and Sleeping With Other People, to read that review click here.

After seeing the trailers and the cast of Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson, Alison Brie and Leslie Munn, I was going into ‘How To Be Single’ with some hope and for a laugh, but sadly it wasn’t the case.

Newly – single Alice (Johnson) hits the New York dating sense and learns the art of no strings, one night stands from party girl Robin (Wilson). While Alice’s career – driven sister Meg (Munn) has become broody and wanting a baby and Lucy (Brie) is trying to find her perfect man.

See the synopsis sounds fun and easy, but if you’re a guy you’ll be bored to tears as there’s nothing throughout the film to find interesting. It’s poorly written and full of clichés.

Alice is a pretty unlikable person after breaking up with her then-boyfriend to “know what it’s like to be single” and it’s quite hard to care for her moving forward. I mean there’s growth with her character, but by then you don’t care.

The same goes for Robin and again you find it hard to find a redeeming feature to her and there’s no real growth throughout the film. Even though Wilson is used as the “comic relief” the scenes in the trailer, where I did find them funny, just didn’t pay off and she seems to be doing the same thing in every movie.

The only character I actually cared about was Lucy has you see her actually grow as the film goes on and Brie is having a fun in the role and seeing her reunite with ‘Sleeping With Other People’ co-star Jason Mantzoukas was good as you see their chemistry on screen. However, by then you’ve lost all interest in the film.

Judging by the 99% female audience at the screening, this film knew exactly who they were aiming at and it was the group of single girls on Valentine’s Day.

Even though they did do previews for Valentine’s weekend it seems like a missed opportunity as releasing the film with week won’t make Warner Bros as much money.

Verdict

Full of clichés, unlikable characters but if you’re a woman and wanted to go out with your friends and want to go to the cinema, you’ll have a great time.