I Want You Back: Movie Review

Cast: Jenny Slate, Charlie Day, Gina Rodriguez, Scott Eastwood
Director: Jason Orley

You can tell exactly what's going to happen in I Want You Back, a romantic comedy that seems to follow all the conventions and the tropes of the genre when two dumped partners meet and decide to foil the plans of their exes' new relationships.

But yet, while I Want You Back's genial mix of gentle comedy and grounded reality comes courtesy of Jenny Slate's likeable performance and Charlie Day's chipmunk style nasal delivery, the film's not quite adept enough at deciding which flag it wants to pin its colours to - with not quite enough edge to cut through a crowded genre.

Slate and Day play Emma and Peter respectively, two people dumped and who meet in their shared company stairwell, before pledging to become "sadness sisters" together. One drunken karaoke night later, the duo has hatched a scheme to destroy their respective other halves' new relationships and reinstall themselves into their lives - because nothing says moving on like going backward.

However, as you'd expect, not everything goes quite as smoothly in this atypical yet somehow typical rom com.

If anyone emerges from this with some credibility it's Slate as Emma, who has a resigned air of weariness that's both endearing and heartbreaking. From waking next to a half consumed box of cereal to delivering a show stopping duet with a child at a dress rehearsal of Little Shop of Horrors, it's Slate's Emma that anchors most of the humanity of the film when the script barely demands it.

Day is perfectly adequate, giving his Peter hints of zaniness but he never really lets fly, constrained by a script that seems too scared to let him do so. Elsewhere, the exes feel like barely sketched out archetypes and it makes any relationship with them feel forced and unnatural - despite the fact Emma and Peter have been with their partners for a substantial amount of time.

You can get a long way with geniality in the romcom genre, but this near 2 hour effort pushes as far as it goes before lapsing for the usual conventions some 30 minutes from the end. It's diverting enough, and just about entertaining, but I Want You Back doesn't quite have the edge to really stand out. In the pantheon of romcoms delivered as Valentine's Day emerges, it's by no means the worse, but for a 21st century effort, there's just a nagging feeling that it could easily have been so much more.

I Want You Back is streaming now on Amazon Prime Video