The Lovebirds is an action/romcom about a couple on their last legs who reignite their spark after getting drawn in to a baffling criminal plot. The movie opens on Jibran(Kumail Nanjiani) and Leilani(Issa Rae) the morning after a one night stand, the spend the day together and begin a relationship. Flash foward four years and they are fighting and truculent. On their way to a friend's dinner party they hit a bicyclist and then are accosted by a strange man chasing the aforementioned bicyclist. They flee the scene and begin a night of careening from place to place in a baffling inept attempt to uncover the mystery they find themselves in.
Nanjiani and Rae are very funny and have incredible presences and charm, their chemistry is decent, but the script fails them again and again forcing them for the majority of the run time to be a hectoring, virtually insufferable couple, throwing themselves into preposterous situations in which they act absurdly. There are moments of actual heart in which the two excel and in which you can see the potential the movie had but their charm alone cannot surmount the banality of the story in which they are confined.
A clear knock off of the far superior Game Night there is no real life in the movie save for that of the leads injected by sheer force of will and talent. The premise that starts the couple off on their journey is so absurd as to be completely disconnecting and that trend continues until it is too late. By the time the movie finally finds it's stride, in the latter third, it's too late and most of the interest and good will has been squandered.
Nanjiani and Rae have some wonderful improvisational flurries at points but the humor and the action are pretty much a failure to launch.
Available to stream on Netflix.
Stream It.
No comments:
Post a Comment