"Life isn't like a romantic comedy," is the major theme of Isn’t it Romantic, a film that aims at parodying the genre, with Rebel Wilson at the forefront. The film follows Wilson as an architect named Natalie, whose life is based solely around this one line of dialogue her mother says to her in the film’s opening, that women like them don’t get happy endings in real life. She gets pushed around at work and fawns over a new client (Liam Hemsworth) but is often cynical, despite having a best friend named Whitney (Betty Gilpin) and a nice co-worker named Josh (Adam DeVine). Though when she hits her head, she wakes up in a world where her life plays out like a PG-13 romantic comedy.
And that’s essentially it. The rest of the film places Natalie in a series of situations that are meant to skewer the rom-com genre. She can’t swear, with her curses being censored via conveniently-timed noises such as a car alarm or something crashing. She can’t actually have sex, as when she prepares for the act, it suddenly cuts to the next morning. And many of the people who had one role in her life now take on something new: Her best friend is now her worst enemy, while her grumpy neighbor now embodies the gay best friend stereotype.
Ironically enough, for someone who ends up being a stereotype, Natalie’s now-best-friend Donny, played by Brandon Scott Jones, winds up being the most entertaining character in the entire movie, namely for being the only one with any actual character development. He gets some of the film’s most meaningful dialogue, as well as some of its funniest lines, which come very few and far in between. His behavior may not sit right with some - which is observed by Natalie herself throughout the movie - which is somewhat upsetting, given his presence is the only one that feels most welcome here.
For a film that looks to teach a lesson, the film really skimps out on the character development for the most part. Natalie is really the same person for nearly the entire movie, up until she has a revelation that’s summed up in one line of dialogue in the last ten minutes of the film. Rebel Wilson can be funny with the right material, but this film really puts her skills to waste. Despite being the main character, Natalie’s role is almost completely reactionary. She seems something that embodies a genre she hates, she states how it’s not normal, then moves on. This cycle is repeated for nearly the entire movie, which winds up feeling gimmicky and one-note rather than actually funny, with the “joke” being that this isn’t what life is really like, but it’s happening anyway.
And for someone who’s as cynical as she is, she’s also highly unappreciative. While the point may have been that when someone’s so down that they tend to not appreciate what’s in front of them, her views tend to make no sense at times. She consistently goes on through the first part of the movie how life isn’t like a romantic comedy, yet finds herself head over heels for someone she knows is clearly not her type. She rebuffs Josh’s interest in her but then goes on to think that no one could possibly ever be interested in her. If she knew how life really works, she’d be open to someone who actually cared for her rather than going for someone who barely acknowledged her.
That’s part of the whole irony of this movie. For a film that looks to satirize the romantic comedy genre - which really isn’t as prominent as it once was anyway, with the most recent references being movies released twenty years ago - it really tends to just play things out like the type of movies it’s making fun of. Once Natalie realizes the only way she may be able to escape this reality is to do what any other romantic comedy would do, it essentially drops the parody and proceeds like any other rom-com would, which makes one wonder what the point of this really is. There’s the aforementioned brief moment of self-revelation, which leads to an ending that’s terrible within the context of the entire movie, but ironically actually contains nearly all the film’s funniest lines.
Isn’t It Romantic is a perfect example of trying and failing. It had the potential to be a clever satire of a genre that most would agree is pretty unrealistic, but instead mainly just becomes what it sets out to destroy. It never has anything insightful to say about the genre and it misuses a fairly talented cast, reducing them to reactionary, thinly-written stereotypes. It really only has one main joke that quickly wears out its welcome after the first few times it’s seen, but still stretches itself out for another hour, leading to a tiring and disappointing experience.
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