{"id":17863,"date":"2022-02-10T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2022-02-10T17:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/?p=17863"},"modified":"2024-03-02T21:13:08","modified_gmt":"2024-03-03T05:13:08","slug":"review-i-want-you-back","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/crookedmarquee.com\/stage8\/review-i-want-you-back\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: I Want You Back<\/i>"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Y\u2019all know gotdamn well how I Want You Back<\/em> ends.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If you\u2019ve heard about the latest rom-com straight off the Amazon Studios conveyor belt, you know how the whole story plays out. Peter (Charlie Day) and Emma (Jenny Slate) are two people whose respective, significant others (Gina Rodriguez, Scott Eastwood) have recently broken up with them. While each having a stairwell crying jag in the office building where they work, they get to know each other and hatch a plan to get their exes back. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First, Emma helps our boy out by volunteering as a stage crew member for a middle-school production of Little Shop of Horrors<\/em>, staged by the drama teacher (The Good Place\u2019<\/em>s Manny Jacinto) who Peter’s girl is now dating. She\u2019s looking to dismantle their union by pulling out the sexy dresses and flirting up a storm. Peter goes on a less flirtatious route; he hires Emma\u2019s fitness-trainer ex, hopefully building enough of a bond where they can pal around and talk about relationships \u2014 particularly, the relationship his trainer\/new best friend has with his pie shop-owner girlfriend (Clark Backo). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

For rom-com lovers and haters, Back<\/em> might be an unusual watch. It\u2019s a love story where the premise is not only absurd, convoluted and over-the-top, but morally messy. I mean, here are two people so hung up on their exes that instead of taking a cue from their former boos and moving the hell on, they join forces to gaslight and manipulate the people they supposedly love in an effort to get them crawling back in their lives. This isn\u2019t even the first time I\u2019ve seen this in a movie: Twenty-five years ago, Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick paired up to stalk their exes all around New York \u2014 before finally falling in each other\u2019s arms \u2014 in Addicted to Love<\/em>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And, yet, this unlikable plot is filled with likable things. Director Jason Orley (Big Time Adolescence<\/em>) and screenwriters Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger (Love, Simon<\/em>) populate this flick with the most relatable, sympathetic characters I\u2019ve ever seen in a rom-com that Richard Curtis didn\u2019t have anything to do with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

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At the top of the list are Day\u2019s Peter and Slate\u2019s Emma. Despite the fact that they\u2019re doing a horrible thing, their characters are mostly presented as lost and lovesick, stuck in that proverbial, existential rut adults get when they haven\u2019t figured out how to be mature and responsible just yet. It helps that Day (keeping the manic shrieking he perfected on It\u2019s Always Sunny in Philadelphia<\/em> to a minimum) and Slate (displaying a seductive confidence even when she\u2019s neurotic and awkward) make a witty, adorable couple, virtually oblivious to the off-the-charts chemistry they have until one finally realizes it and the other has moved on. Some cute subplots (Emma helping out a young boy with parent problems, Peter wanting to open up a proper retirement home) are thrown in to remind viewers that these two aren\u2019t complete scumbags. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The filmmakers also aren\u2019t afraid to mix in farcical moments, like when Slate tries to engage in a clumsy threesome with Jacinto and Rodriguez or when Day and Eastwood spend an out-of-control night with a trio of young ladies and a Molly-carrying gentleman (played in a quick special appearance by a current SNL<\/em> castmate).They also don\u2019t take the easy way out and make the exes nor their new loves out to be the bad guys (though Jacinto\u2019s teacher is amusingly pretentious). From the jump, it\u2019s made quite clear who the (still adorable) assholes are in this story. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Of course, this is all fluffy filler to keep things rolling until we get to the inevitable conclusion for our pitiful protagonists. It takes a sweet while to get there (the movie clocks in at one hour and 51 minutes), eventually unfolding in a predictably implosive fashion \u2014 but somehow resolving things in a swift, tidy manner \u2014 before it reaches its coda, which calls back an earlier bit of dialogue you knew would rear its head again at the end. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I Want You Back<\/em> almost seems like a crazy, cinematic experiment. A bunch of people basically came together to see what would happen if you made one of those complicated, morally messed-up rom-coms and populated it with generally good-natured people you wouldn\u2019t mind hanging out with. This is proof that just because the story is toxic and ridiculous doesn\u2019t mean the characters have to be. \"\"\/<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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“I Want You Back” debuts Friday on Amazon Prime Video<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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