Isn't It Romantic (2019)

Film: Isn't It Romantic (2019)
Stars: Rebel Wilson, Liam Hemsworth, Adam Devine, Priyanka Chopra
Director: Todd Strauss-Schulson
Oscar History: No nominations
Snap Judgment Ranking: 3/5 stars

It seems like critics or film watchers are always pronouncing the romantic comedy as "dead," just to be proven wrong the next year when another rom-com comes out and suddenly the genre has been resuscitated.  However, I think a certain kind of rom-com has in fact died, because each era sort of puts its specific spin on what we expect a romantic-comedy to be, a fact highlighted in Isn't it Romantic, a movie very steeped in 90's tradition, even when it's mocking the format.  The films that made stars out of Julia Roberts, Sandra Bullock, Meg Ryan, & Kate Hudson had pop songs, clumsy but approachable beauties, and always involved her with the wrong guy searching for the right one.  This is at the center of Isn't it Romantic, a cute but hardly groundbreaking film that, like the best of 90's rom-coms, gets most of its power from its affable star.

(Spoilers Ahead) The film centers around Natalie (Wilson), who is an architect at a firm where she's treated like an assistant.  She has a pair of best friends at her office, including Josh (Devine), who is obviously smitten with her, a fact of which only Natalie seems unaware.  She was conditioned by her mother as a child that love and romance were only for women that look like Julia Roberts, not who look like Rebel Wilson, and acts in a similar fashion.  When she is mugged randomly, she knocks herself unconscious, and suddenly the entire world looks like she's in 27 Dresses, with unnaturally handsome doctors, a gay sidekick who caters to her every whim, and a ludicrously sexy billionaire named Blake (Hemsworth) who finds her "beguiling."  Quickly Natalie comes to realize that she's stuck in a romantic comedy of her own, and the only way to wake up is to get a man to fall in love with her.  The problem is that the man she initially gets to love her, Blake, isn't the one she loves, and as a result she starts pursuing Josh instead.

The movie attempts to pay homage to the multitude of cliches from the 1990's/early-aughts rom-coms, even borrowing from the soundtracks of Pretty Woman, She's All That, and Legally Blonde to underline their point.  It works occasionally in making this happen.  Proving that Netflix is never going to elevate a mediocre movie quite like a theater, the audience at my screening really liked picking up on the in jokes, which actually made the whole film more fun.  The skit where Rebel Wilson, so close to getting to have sex with Liam Hemsworth, keeps getting denied thanks to the PG-13 rating imposed by her hallucination is hilarious, and one of several great site gags throughout the film focusing on the laughably over-the-top beauty of Hemsworth and Chopra (like, how do humans like this even exist?).

The problem for the film is that it has to basically indulge the same cliches to get Natalie and Josh together, which was of course the foregone conclusion.  The back-half of the film, where Natalie pursues Josh and then realizes she must love herself first, is a bit hackneyed, and doesn't have enough wink to it to plausibly be paying homage still to other such romantic comedies.  As a result, like most rom-coms of its ilk, the film is entirely dependent on the considerable charms of its leading woman to carry through the repetitive plotting.

This is a strong bet.  Wilson, known so far in her career for physical comedy and gross-out bits in her films, is right-at-home as a romantic heroine you want to be happy.  With a gift for comedic line delivery rivaled by few other actresses working today, she sells every good joke and patches over every bad one she's given.  In an era in desperate need of a new rom-com heroine, she's the best heir I've seen to Ryan/Bullock/Roberts in a while.  Hopefully after elevating Isn't it Romantic, which is pretty good, she'll be given the chance sometime soon to be in a Bridesmaids again where the film is running on as many cylinders as she is.