Hayley’s Thoughts on: Isn’t It Romantic

A non-industry perspective on everything about the industry

It’s been a long time since a solid romantic comedy was released. The type of movie for which you gather all the girlfriends, you buy the largest bags of popcorn they’ve got and, for an hour and thirty minutes, you’re completely entranced by the “ideal” love story.

My best friend, who does not like movies, went back and saw this one a second time. I could just end the review right there — if you knew her, that would convince you.

Isn’t It Romantic opens with a flashback to Rebel Wilson’s character Natalie as a young kid, completely entranced by the “ideal” love story. (Her version involves Julia Roberts. My version now involves Rebel Wilson.) That’s when Natalie’s mom swoops in and shatters, completely obliterates, Natalie’s love of romcoms, stressing how unrealistic they are for women who look the way Natalie and her mother do (read: not like Priyanka Chopra).

We then flash forward to present day Natalie, who is living the opposite of a romantic comedy. We see Natalie wake up in a gray, sad apartment. The camera pans around the apartment, then reveals that Natalie is waking up in a bunk bed. The entire theater cracked up at that — and the theater was pretty crowded. It was a solid beginning to a solid movie.

One of the things that I found refreshing about Isn’t It Romantic is that it doesn’t assume the audience is idiotic.

I think one of the things romcoms always got shit on for was how incredibly predictable they were. But the movie never acknowledged that, and tried to play off the ending as a surprise. Even the title of the movie, Isn’t It Romantic, is a question to the audience — it involves the audience down to the very basic, very obvious level.

You know what will happen in Isn’t It Romantic from the beginning. Her coworker Josh, played by the adorkable Adam Devine (who also plays her “love interest” in the Pitch Perfect franchise) is clearly in love with her. She thinks he’s staring out the window at a giant Priyanka Chopra poster, but no, we all know he is staring at her. Her coworker and best friend Whitney bluntly tells her she is friendzoning him and that he likes her. We all know how this will end — but that isn’t the point of Isn’t It Romantic.

The next time Natalie wakes up, after getting mugger in a subway station, she’s in a fantasyland. New York City is gorgeous. Liam Hemsworth’s character Blake (obviously he is named Blake) is head over heels in love with her. Her office is beautiful and she’s a full blown architect now. Whitney hates her, because two women can’t get along in the workplace, it has to be a catfight. Priyanka Chopra falls in love with Josh. Natalie’s apartment is a palace and she has every shoe she could ever want. It’s a real life romcom.

The film writers and directors clearly had the mission of tearing down typical romcom tropes, mostly by showing how ridiculous and absurd many of them are. “You’re setting gay rights back a hundred years” (or something along those lines), is said by Natalie about her “gay best friend,” a comment on how inappropriate and lame that trope has been. Even the character, Donny, acknowledges he has no job, literally just shows up when Natalie needs him, speaks in the stereotypical gay voice, etc. At the end, I love the reveal of him as a multidimensional gay man. That was definitely a highlight.

For as many tropes as the film tries to dismantle, it falls victim to some as well.

For instance, the Whitney and Natalie relationship in the fantasyland sequence is presented to show how upsetting it is to pit women who love each other against each other. Yet Priyanka Chopra’s Isabella and Natalie grow to dislike each other and are pitted against each other in competition over Josh. Thankfully, that gets resolved, in the best possible way.

That’s right folks. The one romcom that pretty much states how it’s going to end in the beginning is holding a secret from the audience. One that almost made me tear up, that made me look at my friends and audibly “awww,” that’s still got me thinking about the truth in romcoms days later.

As Natalie tries to escape the live romcom, the fantasyland she’s trapped in, she’s sure she has to get Blake to fall in love with her and then she can wake up (something she attempts to postpone and also attempts to steal a purse to take back to reality with her). But that doesn’t work out. So then she’s sure Josh has to fall in love with her. But he’s in love with Isabella. Can she really steal him away from her after rejecting him for so long?

The truth sets Natalie free, literally, and she wakes back up in a (thank God) dirty ER bed with an ugly doctor, in her drab clothes and goes back to her even drabbier apartment. And that day is better than fantasyland ever was.

Finally, a charming song and dance number raps up the film. It was so joyous, so over the top and overdone, that it was brilliant and the perfect ending.

Isn’t It Romantic is a movie about all forms of love, taking down the stereotypes (even if occasionally, incidentally fulfilling them) and giving us a glimpse of reality. And having Rebel Wilson star as a romantic lead is a huge positive for society all around and I commend people on that. Now that we’re establishing that as normal, let’s have it not be shocking that someone like Liam Hemsworth could fall in love her next time.

This was the perfect Valentine’s movie for 2019.

In some ways, it reminds me of To All the Boys I Loved Before, in that it plays to all the tropes, but it just does it better than almost anyone. I hope that more romantic comedies that get released soon take note of these two and try to follow suit. Keep the devoted romcom fanbase there, but elevate the plots and tropes and make them work for modern times and multidimensional characters. These two movies give me hope that a romcom resurgence is on the horizon.

Wouldn’t that be the ultimate fantasyland?

Recommend a movie for me in the comments and maybe I’ll go next week!

I (try to) go to the movies every Tuesday and will post a review and “Hayley’s Thoughts” following each one.

Thanks for reading. :)