Movie review: ‘How To Be Single’

Like a box of generic chocolates purchased with little thought, How To Be Single is being dumped into theaters on Valentine’s Day weekend, a cynical counterprogramming ploy for those couples who won’t be making Deadpool part of date night.

What seems in its trailers to be a tart antidote to the typical rom-com treacle turns out to be anything but. It’s a rom-com with more cursing and substance abuse than is generally found in these PG-13 cream puffs, in an effort to seem edgy.

What’s most frustrating is the near-total waste of an appealing cast, led by Dakota Johnson (who, after suffering through Valentine’s Day weekend last year with Fifty Shades of Grey, must be developing PTSD around Cupid), Leslie Mann, Alison Brie and Rebel Wilson.

The screenplay, coughed up by Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein and Dana Fox, reliably includes every cliche (the sarcastic hot guy who just wants love; the widower afraid to love again) and makes room for not one, but two self-discovery montages.

How To Be Single would be a little easier to take if its characters — nearly every one of them people who have life figured out just fine — weren’t complete ciphers, manipulated into whatever contortions the plot demands.

The obstetrician (Mann) who sacrificed family for her career? Hey, maybe she gets a case of baby fever! The spunky college grad (Johnson) who thinks she and her boyfriend ( Braun) should take a break so they can “find themselves”? Boy, will she regret doing that!

On and on it goes, until you begin praying for the sweet release of the credits.

Equally offensive to audiences (in theory) is the notion that, in 2016, a woman would collapse into a man’s arms and sob “You’re so handy!” as happens here. Being sad to lose a romantic partner is one thing, but crumpling on the floor in tears because unzipping your dress is a challenge seems extraordinarily retrograde on the screenwriters’ part.

Johnson and her castmates do what they can with such drivel, and it’s particularly depressing to see Wilson reduced to the role of bumbling, bawdy drunk (despite the film’s attempt to save it all with a reveal late in the proceedings).

Viewers might envy Wilson’s prodigious consumption of booze but only because they sit through How To Be Single stone cold sober, instead of being able to blot out the whole miserable enterprise.

This story was originally published February 11, 2016 at 1:53 AM with the headline "Movie review: ‘How To Be Single’."