I Want You Back, 2022.
Directed by Jacob Orley.
Starring Charlie Day, Jenny Slate, Scott Eastwood, Manny Jacinto, Clark Backo, Gina Rodriguez, Luke David Blumm, Braxton Alexander, Ava Ann Gale, Mason Gooding, Giselle Torres, Isabel May, Quinn Cooke, Claudia Rocafort, Kysen Acevedo, Jami Gertz, Dylan Gelula, Lauren Halperin, Thy Bui, and Pete Davidson.
SYNOPSIS:
Newly dumped thirty-somethings Peter and Emma team up to sabotage their exes’ new relationships and win them back for good.
Every once in a while, a plot that sounds insufferable simply because it’s born from selfish characters doing cruel things turns out to be moderately enjoyable. I Want You Back involves two individuals badly coping with their partners breaking up with them, teaming up to destroy the new relationships so they can get back together. Casting is essential, and there aren’t many actors that can make this work aside from Charlie Day and Jenny Slate, who are not only hilarious but manage to make these characters endearing despite the rotten core of the leads.
Middle-school English teacher Anne (Gina Rodriguez) is breaking up with Peter (Charlie Day) because he’s a little boring, and she’s craving something different (I guess you could say the partners are not that much better people). The handsomely chiseled Noah (Scott Eastwood) doesn’t like that Emma (Jenny Slate) still has no idea what she wants to do with her life and lives with college-aged roommates. So begins the painful process of accepting what is no more and moving on.
It turns out Peter and Anna work in the same office building where the former is frustrated that the company he joined to try improving elderly nursing homes is only concerned with depriving them of food and goods to save some money. The latter is an orthodontist receptionist. As fate would have it, they cross each other’s paths on the stairwell while crying, having just found out that their ex-partners have new partners. Following some amusing karaoke and eliciting laughs restraining each other from the temptation of calling their exes and begging to get back together, they decide to become “sadness sisters,” calling each other for comfort whenever they feel an overwhelming urge to talk to their former significant other.
Nothing about the jokes are particularly smart or creative, as for the most part, it’s Peter working with gym workout horse Noah (a dynamic Charlie Day knows how to mine for simple but effective laughs with his sharp line delivery) to manipulate him into remembering the good times with Emma and wanting her back, and Emma trying to seduce Anne’s new boyfriend, a hipster middle school drama teacher (Manny Jacinto). Some of the set pieces are genuinely funny, especially a night out clubbing that descends into a nightmare for a variety of reasons (including a cameo appearance from Pete Davidson, who previously starred as a directionless burnout hanging out with teenagers for director Jacob Orley on the underseen gem Big Time Adolescence). Meanwhile, the seduction aspect mainly involves Emma pretending to understand musical theater and making Anne jealous.
Every soul on Earth that decides to fire I Want You Back up on Amazon Prime will know how this will end. However, the script from Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger certainly takes the most roundabout way to get there, meaning the two-hour running time starts to get tiring, as 30 minutes of this could have easily been trimmed. That sentiment is only amplified when it becomes clear that the movie cares more about mainstream broad humor over fleshing out these characters and their horrible decisions (although there are a few recent observations about dating and who people should choose to be with). There are also subplots such as Emma bonding with the angsty middle-schooler about his gay father that can’t stop having affairs, which is mean-spirited and goes nowhere. Noah’s new girlfriend Ginny (Clark Backo) also feels like an afterthought as a character, defined as owning her pie store.
The cast is enough to keep one chuckling along for the ride, but again, the story definitely runs out of gas at two hours. Still, as cheesy as it is, the final shot of I Want You Back is a winner; it gives the expected ending with a little bit of creativity and without grandstanding theatrics. Most importantly, everyone here is funny, so it would be nice to see this cast back together working on something else in the future. Charlie Day often ekes out laughs in some of the worst material but doesn’t have that problem here, with him and Jenny Slate bouncing off each other with delightful chemistry.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ ★ ★ / Movie: ★ ★ ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
Originally published February 10, 2022. Updated February 9, 2022.
