We’ve all come across good-enough films before. Not bad per se, not memorable either, but if caught in the right middling mood – or on a plane – good enough. Ben (The Inbetweeners Movie) Palmer’s London-set rom-com pairs American indie queen Lake Bell with British nerd king Simon Pegg and is, for the most part, good enough. Funny, if not especially romantic, it’s steeped in cynicism so deep even a climactic flash mob can’t sweeten things. Ironically, Nick Frost’s overlooked Cuban Fury worked much more deftly at getting this balance right.
Bell plays a Bridget Jones type (with a great English accent), who’s 34, fretfully single and given to self-improvement mantras such as “put yourself out there”, “take chances” and “understand the Israeli-Palestine conflict better”. En route to her parents’ wedding anniversary, she inadvertently steals poor Ophelia Lovibond’s blind date (Pegg), and they tool around London together until they start to feel a connection…
For all the meet-cutes, it’s really not that cute. Bell is blackmailed into a compromising situation (well, assault) by former suitor/sex pest Rory Kinnear, and gives a speech about blowjobs that’s straight out of Gone Girl. Pegg thinks she’s ten years younger than she is and keeps talking about her bum. And they both steam-roller other people’s feelings to get what they – think they – want.
Thanks to the charisma of the performers and the quality of Tess Morris’s jokes, it almost comes off. But the pair’s obsessive pursuit of pairing off at all costs leaves a nasty taste, and that’s not quite good enough.
