Isn’t It Romantic: Film Review
I was in love with the idea of Isn’t It Romantic from the beginning and that only continued to swell from the trailers. It looked so up my street! And thankfully, it delivers on its exciting premise and I was not disappointed.
Rebel Wilson stars as Natalie, a cynical architect who grows up believing that romantic comedies are trash. One night she is mugged on the subway and hits her head… and wakes up inside a romantic comedy! Her apartment has magically become huge and fancy, she is now the firm’s top architect and she is being pursued by hot businessman Blake (Liam Hemsworth). She knows there must be a mission to help her get back to her real life – so she tries to stop her best friend Josh (Adam DeVine) from getting married to Isabella (Priyanka Chopra), who he’s just met.
I loved everything about it. Isn’t It Romantic is a satirical romantic comedy which takes the piss out of romantic comedy tropes. It identifies the ridiculous clichés that always happen in those movies and plays them up in Natalie’s alternative world – where the street she lives is now this cute place in New York rather than the realistic dirty road, she now has a gay best friend, Donny (Brandon Scott Jones), who magically appears when she needs to discuss her life and her best friend at work, Whitney (Betty Gilpin), is now her mortal enemy – cause women can’t be friends, silly! I also loved how she couldn’t swear or have sex, as those things never happen in sweet little PG romcom world!
It made me smile a lot and laugh out loud a few times. Wilson was the perfect choice of lead for this and she was so much fun. She reunites with her Pitch Perfect love interest DeVine and it’s so nice because that chemistry is already there. Hemsworth – like his brother Chris – proved that he doesn’t take himself too seriously and was hilarious (give him more comedy roles) while Chopra didn’t really do anything of note except look pretty. Gilpin was fabulous as ever!
I don’t think Isn’t It Romantic had the most perfect script but it had an excellent premise and incredible ideas. I loved how it basically called romcoms out on their BS. It does fall foul of some of the tropes – the ending is incredibly predictable for example – but it’s hard to know if that’s deliberate or not. As a major romcom fan, I just enjoyed picking up on all the references and being like, “Yeah they totally do that!” It was delightful, so much fun and I enjoyed it immensely. Oh, and did I mention it ends with a musical number?!
Streaming on Netflix from Thursday 28th February