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WHAT IT'S ABOUT:
After hitting her head, an architect who hates romantic comedies wakes up to find her unremarkable life has become a dazzling, cliché-driven rom-com.
WHAT WE THOUGHT:
Romantic comedies hardly ever break the mould. It’s a pretty standard recipe where you know what you’re getting. You either love the genre or you hate it.
Isn’t It Romantic takes all those famous flicks: Pretty Woman, The Wedding Singer to Miss Congeniality - to name a few - and spoofs them.
While spoofing them Isn’t It Romantic becomes the very thing it is mocking – cliché ridden and predictable.
Rebel Wilson plays Natalie an architect who constantly gets overlooked at work, gets treated badly by her colleagues and lacks self-confidence. She hates romantic comedies because they set unrealistic expectations about life and love. After a scuffle she hits her head and wakes up in the one thing she loathes: a PG 13 romantic comedy.
Natalie is living her worst nightmare: she lives in a great apartment, has a great wardrobe and even has a love interest Blake (Liam Hemsworth).
To get out of the romantic comedy and back to her real life Natalie believes that someone has to fall in love with her.
There are some really funny moments in the film and I particularly enjoyed trying to name all the rom-coms the movie mocks. But these moments weren’t enough to keep me entertained especially in the second half when the pace and plot took a dip and the tone went from funny to suddenly serious with an empowering message.
While Wilson is a good supporting actress for me she wasn’t captivating enough to carry the film on her shoulders as the lead.
There were parts where I felt like she was trying just too hard. Her supporting cast made up of Priyanka Chopra, Liam Hemsworth and Adam Devine were just OK.
One thing is for sure Chris Hemsworth is officially the funny Hemsworth. As for Devine, he always plays the same type of roles – I wish he would try something different.
There’s nothing new to see in Isn’t It Romantic so if you enjoy a predictable romantic comedy you won’t go wrong with this one.
