Mark Reviews Movies: I WANT YOU BACK

I Want You Back, Amazon Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | February 10, 2022

There's a nice tension in I Want You Back between wanting to like the main characters, who have been dumped by their respective significant others, and suspecting that we probably shouldn't, because they react to the break-ups in a slightly terrible and kind of discomforting way. In that tension, there's comedy, though, and it's nice to see a romantic comedy that gives us a couple of thoughts, conceits, and feelings we don't expect, instead of simply forcing jokes and complications until the inevitable conclusion.

To be clear, there are plenty of complications here, but they're dictated by the characters' actions, not the screenplay's need for contrivance or convenience. Those moments of self-inflicted uncertainty, awkwardness, and trouble are the foundation of the humor here, and they work because the actors are charming and funny enough to pull off the gags. It's also funny, to be honest, because these characters kind of deserve the embarrassment a bit, too.

On the one side, we have Peter (Charlie Day), who has been dating Anne (Gina Rodriguez), a middle school teacher, for about six years. He has become comfortable in his life, even if he quietly hates his job working for a chain of nursing homes that cares more about profit than the residents. Anne, though, wants more. She had dreams of studying theater in Europe, and in the time she has been dating Peter, the two have never left the country. She breaks up with him at a kid's birthday party, leaving Peter singing the song in the middle of sobbing fits.

On the other side, we have Emma (Jenny Slate), who works as a receptionist at an orthodontist's office and still lives in the apartment she had during college (Her two roommates, played by Dylan Gelula and Mason Gooding, are law students, dating, and don't hide their irritation with her presence). She has been with Noah (Scott Eastwood), a personal trainer, for more than a year, but he thinks Emma is stuck in life and lacks the ambition to do anything about it. He dumps at her lunch, amusingly preparing her for his absence by encouraging her to keep protein and iron in her diet.

Peter and Emma just happen to work in the same office building and meet while having a moment of misery in the stairwell. They decide to go out for drinks and sing away the pain with karaoke. The obvious move screenwriters Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger could make here is for a drunken mistake, but instead, the two dumpees decide to be there for each other as friends, support, and a sound board for other's problems. It's sweet, because it feels so genuine in its simplicity, and amusing, because Day and Slate play off each other with one-liners and banter so well.

Anyway, that sweetness gets a little, sort-of sinister shock when both Peter and Emma discover that their respective ex is dating someone else—and it's serious. They devise a plan. Emma will volunteer at Anne's school, attempting to seduce her new drama teacher boyfriend Logan (Manny Jacinto). Meanwhile, Peter (whose seduction potential is dismissed with a laugh) will befriend Noah and convince him that he made a mistake in dumping Emma for Ginny (Clark Backo).

This crisscross sabotage scheme is fairly clever as a gimmick, but it's smarter, perhaps, that Aptaker and Berger don't turn the exes or the new romantic interests into jerks, awful people, or general villains. To be sure, Logan turns out not to be the most upright of monogamous romantic partners (It's not as if he's dishonest about that with Anne, who has made a point of wanting to be more of a free spirit in the first place), but mostly, he's just laughably self-serious and emotionally aloof. There's even a sincere sort of harmony to the pairing of Noah and Ginny—to the point that even Peter starts to feel guilty about his end of the bargain.

From a certain perspective, then, Emma and Peter are the antagonists here, which isn't to say they're unpleasant or loathsome or particularly wicked in their motives and actions. They're simply misguided, conniving, and more than a bit self-centered. In the way the screenwriters and director Jason Orley come up with new obstacles (Peter finds himself in a chest at the foot of a doubly occupied bed) and humiliations (Emma ends up on stage in a play for which she doesn't know the lines—noting that people have literal nightmares about that exact situation) for them, it's fair to say the film feels that way about them, too. A party with an unexpected twist and a crowded attempt at coupling more or less solidify that assumption.

Again, Day and Slate are amusing and amiable enough that we can fundamentally sympathize with the heartbreak and more that these ended relationships have brought Peter and Emma. If the filmmakers are smart enough to give us a sense of Anne and Noah in their newly imagined or real happiness, they also let the harebrained and shortsighted plan to ruin those other relationships change Peter and Emma—their understandings of themselves, what they want from love, and how they see each other.

Yes, all of this ultimately moves in a pretty predictable direction, but the film's clever gimmick, solid performances, and attention to comedic tension ensure that the inevitable conclusion is earned. Just as importantly, I Want You Back makes certain that, as twisted as the means may be, the characters earn it, too.

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