Audiences who love Hollywood romantic comedies have been in an abusive relationship for a decade.
For a long while, it was magical. Katherine Hepburn tackled Cary Grant (like, actually tackled him) and tamed a cantankerous Spencer Tracy. Doris Day dazzled Rock Hudson. Fonda had her Redford, Streisand had her Ryan ONeal. The 1990s and early 2000s let us swoon over women Julia, Meg, Reese, Sandra, Meg each actress anchoring a $100 million hit. But around the 80th year of bliss the oak anniversary, if you were wondering the studios gave the genre a coffin. Romantic comedies hacked the expensive 2010 flop How Do You Know into a bloody hankie, then basically up and died.
The autopsy gaslit women by claiming they dont go to the movies. Fact: Females over 25 buy more tickets than teen boys than anyone even without films made for, by and starring women. The truth is two-parts boring blah blah blah about $30 million marketing budgets scaring traditional studios from green-lighting anything that wont make over $100 million on opening weekend alone and one-part this line from Claire Scanlons Set It Up, the first great, glossy rom-com in years. Its made, tellingly, by Netflix.
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Do you know what the opposite of love is? asks its twentysomething lead. Indifference. Shed know. Hollywoods been indifferent to rom coms for a while now but maybe the actress playing her can change that. Its impossible not to fall for Zoey Deutchs Harper, an aspiring sports writer slaving away as a personal assistant to her hero, Kirsten (Lucy Liu). The young woman is smart, funny, strange, loyal and electric with fear that she wont fulfill the magazine editors smallest whim. Shes a tiny thing with auburn curls and quivering lips that toggle through emotions faster than they can be identified. When Kirsten dares Harper to pitch a story idea when shes halfway out the door, our hero beams, freezes, swallows, scrunches her eyes, exhales and stammers about the Gerilympics, an Olympiad for white-haired senior citizens. All this happens so fast you cant even see Deutch acting. But her bitty strut, widened Bambi eyes and motormouth Rosalind Russell delivery are evidence shes in complete control.
On another floor in their skyscraper, wannabe investor Charlie (Glen Powell) fetches juices for his boss, Rick (Taye Diggs). Picture Patrick Batemen without the chainsaw, and thats the corporate hotshot on an average day. Our six-foot honey badger Charlie, naturally, wants to be just like him. His job includes, among many other things, protecting the tycoon from hearing about his ex-wifes upcoming spiritual non-legal commitment ceremony a task done with the panic of throwing ones body on a grenade. The first time Charlie meets Harper, hes so desperate to feed Rick that he poaches the burger she ordered for her overlord. Sauntering into the elevator, he bites into her pickle and grins.
These workaholics are both in psychotically committed relationships with their employers. But the grunts control their bosses schedules; they also know their turn-ons (power, self-branding) and turn-offs (sour cream, mansplaining). If they can manipulate the people holding their white-collar leashes into hooking up, they may even get to occasionally go home before midnight. (All the better for Harper to swipe Tinder while eating popcorn from an ingenious feedbag, i.e. a hoodie worn backwards like a trough.) As for Charlies model girlfriend Suze (Joan Smalls ), she already acts single. Theres a note-perfect beat at a party when he sneaks up to hug her from behind. She screams with glee and then sees that its just him. Her second squeal sounds phony. If our man truly cared about a soulmate connection, hed notice.
Harper doesnt date. Charlie barely is. Of course these kids will fall in love, too, but its the jostling to get there that matters, the way that the assistants attack each other while bowing and scraping before their supervisors. Liu and Diggs stomp through the film like toddler gods, cracking exactly one smile each. Their cold menace is their connection. When Charlie advises Rick to tell Kirsten he sees her, his boss groans, What does that even mean? He uses the line anyway. Of course his fellow apex predator retches.
Screenwriter Katie Silbermans dialogue is a reminder that pre-Apatow movies bothered to script quips instead of pointing the camera and praying for improv. Like a classic screwball farce, Set It Ups four leads hurl lines at each other like 60 m.p.h. sliders. Its an unabashed rom-com Scanlon doesnt try to straddle drama in the name of a safety net which means the soundtrack sometimes blares like a TV game-show reveal of a brand new boat. But the comic energy is fierce, especially in Deutchs corner; shes had a gift for playing fast-talking dames since the underrated Vampire Academy. Give her shoulder pads and a time machine and she could muscle into His Girl Friday.
And while the movie isnt heavily plotted, the humor is so dense its practically footnoted. Every gag has callbacks Harpers unnerving fixation on babies, an exasperated neighborhood waiter plus extra punchlines tacked on like asterisks. Every sequence is bracketed in slapstick. Scenes start with, say, a glimpse of Taye Diggs attempting to slice open a whiskey bottle with a samurai sword; they end with Deutch wheeling out of frame on an roller chair waving, Byeeeee! When Harper embraces her best friend Becca (Meredith Hagner), Charlie is in the deep background invisibly fist-bumping Beccas fianc. Their world is 3D.
No one in Set It Up is nice even Harper can be cruel. Instead, the movie gives us an extraordinary sense of embedded empathy. Reading minds is what these assistants do best. They study faces for cues like service dogs and translate their owners commands to order that thing from that place. In the sexiest scene in the movie, Charlie scans the hunger in Harpers eyes when they open a pizza box and chivalrously lets her select the best piece. At that moment, the film cranks up the erotic R&B. And at the climax, look for the tiniest squint, an almost imperceptible poker tell that allows the tone to spin from resentful to romantic.
That empathy Harper and Charlies eagerness to understand their bosses and each other might be what defines the next era of romantic comedies. Weve cycled through the bite of Bringing Up Baby, the ease of Pillow Talk and retro-screwball bite of Whats Up Doc,the bombastic grins of our Nineties goddesses. Now audiences want movies with insight by filmmakers who wave away girl-versus-boy behavioral cliches to write real characters. So heres our command: more films like Set It Up, please. Netflix has started releasing a rom-com every month. If the studios still wont make them, swipe left.
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