FILM REVIEW: The Lovebirds
By Dwight Brown NNPA News Wire Film Critic
It probably looked really good on paper. Bickering couple gets caught up in a murder and goes on the lam. It’s just enough of a framework for two comic geniuses to flaunt their comedy licks.
Kumail Nanjiani made a name for himself on the series Silicon Valley and hit it big with the romantic comedy The Big Sick. His screenplay, written with wife Emily V. Gordon, won an Oscar nomination. Issa Rae turned her YouTube series The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl into opportunity after opportunity; from HBO’s Insecure to the very romantic film The Photograph.
The two are hot commodities in the entertainment world. They are as contemporary and edgy in this day as Eddie Murphy was in his, when he stumbled into Beverly Hills Cop and his career blew up. The key difference? That film’s director (Martin Brest), writer (Daniel Petrie Jr) and editors (Arthur Coburn and Billy Weber) flung a door open for him.
Jibran (Nanjiani), a documentary filmmaker, and his lover Leilani (Rae) are a very modern couple. Not because they are multi-cultural, Pakistani American and African American, though that is very au current. More because they are so caught up in their Instagram, entrenched in Google calendars and deeply neurotic. They barely function as humans, barely make a connection. Communications are usually verbal jabs and cryptic feelings that when expressed send mixed signals at best. After years of living together they still can’t read each other: “Is that your I wanna kiss you face?” says Leilani. Sister, if you have to ask him, you two need therapy.
One fateful night in New Orleans, benign antagonism rises to a level of no return. “I don’t want to be with someone who is so f—ing insecure!” “I don’t want to be with someone who is a failure.” At the height of their squabbling they drive into a cyclist, who cracks the window of their Subaru Forester and starts them on a chain of mishaps. They’re carjacked by a murderer, kidnapped and then drawn into a sex cult. Can they make it through the night?
Nice setup. Actor turned screenwriter Aaron Abrams delivers a screenplay that has as a solid foundation for comedy. Odd characters, continuously evolving unimaginable situations and a beginning, middle and end frame the hysterics. A formulaic, TV sensibility thwarts those good intentions. The script persists in giving Jibran and Leilani too much dialogue. Add in the two leads penchant for running their comic mouths, and tedious scenes turn into verbal quagmires with no exit plan. A little, pointed back and forth is fine. Incessant talking tests patience.
If the writer doesn’t know how to end a scene, it would be helpful if the editors (Vince Filippone and Robert Nassau) did. They don’t. They cut the footage down to 86 minutes, so the overall film is short, but most of the vignettes drag.
