Isn’t It Romantic

In 2015’s The Final Girls, Todd Strauss-Schul­son upend­ed slash­er movie clichés by trans­port­ing a group of genre-savvy teens into their very own Fri­day the 13^th. With Isn’t It Roman­tic the direc­tor con­tin­ues what appears to be a run­ning theme as he sends Rebel Wilson’s Natal­ie into an all-singing, all-danc­ing roman­tic comedy.

With a pokey apart­ment, col­leagues that con­stant­ly demean her and no epic love affair on the hori­zon, Natal­ie leads a pret­ty ordi­nary exis­tence. She’s bol­stered by her dozy assis­tant (Bet­ty Gilpin), who lives vic­ar­i­ous­ly through rom-coms, and her best friend Josh (Adam DeVine) who seems to only have eyes for a bill­board of Priyan­ka Chopra.

Natal­ie rebukes society’s roman­tic expec­ta­tions but finds her­self hav­ing to con­form to them when she hits her head after a botched mug­ging and wakes up in a real-life rom-com. Now dressed as Julia Roberts in Pret­ty Woman, Natal­ie finds that men are extra chival­rous, she’s mor­tal ene­mies with her assis­tant (because women can’t be friends in rom-coms), and has a gay best friend who has no life out­side of hers.

Wil­son is par­tic­u­lar­ly good here, merg­ing her loud, self-aware Pitch Per­fect per­sona with one that’s con­sid­er­ably more nuanced. Every­thing about her per­for­mance just clicks, and it’s excit­ing to know that in the right role she can be such a gift­ed per­former. Her co-stars Chopra and Liam Hemsworth do what they do best by stand­ing around look­ing attrac­tive, while DeVine offers a more toned down ver­sion of his goofy comedic self.

More cyn­i­cal view­ers will quick­ly iden­ti­fy how the film tries to have its cake and eat it. As Natal­ie wan­ders around scoff­ing at a hunky cop’s badge read­ing ​‘Offi­cer Han­som’ and being forced to hear her own perky voiceover, Isn’t It Roman­tic hits many of the beats com­mon­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the movies and genre it’s mock­ing. But when it throws in a ran­dom dance num­ber to Whit­ney Houston’s ​‘I Wan­na Dance with Some­body (Who Loves Me)’ it’s dif­fi­cult not to be won over.

The end­ing unfolds pre­cise­ly how you expect it to, but the film gets by on an abun­dance of charm and pos­sess­es a satir­i­cal edge that is just enough to make it stand out. Smart obser­va­tions are made about Natalie’s weight ren­der­ing her invis­i­ble to men and how gay men should be free to not be fab­u­lous, which helps break up the occa­sion­al­ly repet­i­tive flow of jokes. The satire isn’t quite as sharp as you would hope though.