Mark Reviews Movies: THE LOVEBIRDS

Follow on Facebook | Follow on Twitter | Become a Patron

Review by Mark Dujsik | May 21, 2020

Casting matters, and it especially matters with a comedy such as The Lovebirds. It's a movie based around three, four, or five lengthy comedic sequences, and the fact that the number isn't more specific probably says a lot about their effectiveness. A few are memorable enough, and the climactic one, set at a secret gathering of powerful people wearing masks and participating in a kinky lottery, is just shy of conceptually inspired. Aaron Abrams and Brendan Gall's screenplay has one central conceit—lovers at odds and on the lam trying to solve a mystery—and then several ideas about the shenanigans that couple can encounter.

Ideally, the movie's ideas would be funnier on their own. Ideally, director Michael Showalter would bring a bit more momentum to the whole of the movie, instead of just letting each gag sequence build up on its own, isolated from the entire concept of a whole story. Ideally, the movie's successes wouldn't come down to its stars, Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae, as their characters bicker and become distraught with each new obstacle, while the actors themselves seemingly riff their way through the entire movie.

Things, though, are rarely ideal, especially in the case of a comedy such as this one. It's kind of clever, sure, and intermittently amusing, of course. The movie's already only-kind-of-clever charms, though, are limited. The amusing bits almost always have to do with some joke that Nanjiani throws away or with Rae's confidence in playing both the straight part in the comedic duo and the joker. They're both working their hindquarters off in this movie, and you mainly wish their effort was with it.

Nanjiani plays Jibran, and Rae plays Leilani. The two had a whirlwind romance, going from an apparent one-night stand to something more serious rather quickly. Several years later, we catch up with them, arguing about whether or not they would win a globetrotting reality show with much more passion and anger than such a debate deserves. While driving to a party, the two come to the realization that the relationship isn't working anymore.

Just after the spontaneous break-up, the car slams into a man on a bicycle. He's hurt but wants to get away in a hurry. That's when another man (played by Paul Sparks), who says he's a cop, arrives, demanding to use the couple's car to pursue the cyclist. There's a chase, and the pair's enthusiasm for the thrill immediately drops when the driver hits the cyclist again. Then, he backs the car over the guy, rolls it forward, and backs up again.

With the murderer gone, Jibran and Leilani would look guilty to any passersby, and sure enough, that's when two passersby arrive and call the cops. The couple runs and comes up with a plan to figure out who the victim was, determine the identity of his killer, and prove their innocence.

The plot is little more than the two finding one clue after another, going from location to location, and encountering one strange person after another—and before that big group of weird individuals at the clandestine meeting of a secretive organization, built upon getting sexual kicks in an auditorium. In other words, it's a plot designed for several comedic setpieces, in which the mechanics of the mystery are just an excuse to get from one to the next.

One has the couple abducted by a mysterious woman (played by Anna Camp), who's convinced the two have blackmail material about her congressman husband (because they're pretending to be the dead guy, although it really doesn't matter, as you've probably figured out by now). Nanjiani and Rae nervously joke their way through the scene, and the punch line is a rather violent bit of slapstick, involving the thing behind a barn door (It's either that or getting a face full of scalding bacon grease). Another scene has the two trying to play the tough interrogators to a frat guy (played by Moses Storm), and while Nanjiani and Rae are appropriately awkward in their rough attitudes, the dynamics of the scene are off-kilter. Their methods, meant to be a joke, actually work against the terrified, if slightly confused, guy. The scene, then, isn't really a gag on its own. The humor entirely depends on Nanjiani and Rae's delivery.

That, again, could really be said about the whole movie. The two actors are intrinsically funny, and they play off each other quite well. There's never a sense that either one is trying to upstage the other. We buy Nanjiani and Rae as a couple at the possible end of their time together, fighting but still having some undeniable connection, and as individuals approaching their wits' end from the dangerous trials over the course of the long night.

On another level, though, we also feel bad that they have support so much of The Lovebirds on their shoulders. Nanjiani and Rae are certainly funny and charming enough to carry a movie. That doesn't mean they should have to.

Back to Home

Buy Related Products