"For you or for me?" How Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon are trying to resurrect rom-com and Kutcher's career
Miscellaneous / / April 02, 2023
February 10 on Netflix premiered the film "to you or to me?". The film was written and directed by Aline Brosh McKenna. First of all, she is known as the scriptwriter for the films "The Devil Wears Prada" and "Cruella". Starring 2000 superstars Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon.
Debbie and Peter have been friends for about 20 years. Once they slept together, but did not begin to meet - and became best friends. Debbie lives in Los Angeles and is raising her son, Peter lives in New York and earns money. Suddenly, Debbie decides to take a refresher course in New York. But due to the fact that she has no one to leave her son with, she almost refuses to travel. Peter comes to the rescue. The heroes change houses for a week and realize how much they kept back to each other.
Encyclopedia of Canons
"To you or to me?" maximally classic rom-com. Starting with the scene where the main characters get dressed in the morning to cheerful music, and ending with a touching episode of confession of feelings. A couple of dialogues in the spirit of βWhat is love?β, Understatement that interferes with life, talkative women and silent men - all components are collected in one place, but this is not a mosaic, but a bunch of platitudes.
Much of the film's problems stem from the fact that the writers reproduce standard genre elements without attempting to reassemble or change them. Perhaps the characters are a little more sexually liberated than the standard zeros rom-com characters. And Peter also likes to drink San Pellegrino too much - the water, of course, is good, but not to the same extent.
Not funny at all
Romantic comedies are rarely really funny. Word "comedyβ rather hints at a light atmosphere that does not imply the presence of unsolvable problems for the characters. But humor is usually still there. A few jokes at the beginning, a couple in the middle, and one after the main storyline ends. With great luck, half of the jokes turn out to be funny. "To you or to me?" no luck: everything is bad with humor here. The best comedy sequence in the film is the first scene, and then everything goes downhill.
Ashton Kutcher's character is supposedly funny because he's rich, tough, and a ladies' man who misses his dad (and only listens to the band his dad loved because of it). The description of the character hints that he does not have very many chances to be really funny - that's why he is not funny.
The heroine of Reese Witherspoon is much more interesting and even funnier, but the best scenes with her end by the 10th minute. Then she goes to classes, reads Peter's manuscript (too admiringly) and thinks about what she should do with this life.
Any film from Matthew McConaughey or Owen Wilson from the 2000s is much more fun - of course, except for The Wedding Planner.
Too bland
The heroes of the film are always lucky. If you need a literary editor, he appears nearby. If you need an assistant in a new city, he just comes into the apartment. No effort is required from the characters - they just wait until the end of the film so that love wins.
The secondary characters were the same. They usually do two things in rom-coms: they help the main characters get together and they serve as a source of jokes. In the tape "To you or to me?" there is Debbie's neighbor who is in love with her - in general, this is a classic type, but there is too little of it. Everyone else is also just waiting for the final scene, along the way communicating with the main characters on abstract topics.
"To you or to me?" is too standard rom-com, and this is its problem. Abandoning several elements and plot moves traditional for the genre, it was possible to make the film much more interesting. If you want to know what the classic rom-com filmed now will look like, you should pay attention to "To you or to me?". If interested good romcombetter choose something else.
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Text worked on: author Dmitry Kamyshenko, editor Alina Mashkovtseva, proofreader Olga Sytnik