Romantic comedies have a bad reputation for being lazy,
derivative, and overly-reliant on formula, and it’s usually a well-deserved
criticism. Romantic comedies are to the
female demographic what generic action flicks are to the male demographic, and
they generally serve only to fill in box office schedules for weekends where
there aren’t any big blockbuster releases.
They’re cheap to produce and there’s always an audience for them, so
it’s easy to see why studios are willing to make a few every year without much
thought put into them. That’s why What If seems to me like some sort of
bizarre paradox, because it is certainly derivative and formulaic, but it gets
by almost entirely on a charm that certainly took some thought and effort to
realize.
The story is your standard boilerplate rom-com set-up: two
attractive twenty-somethings meet and then spend the entire film awkwardly
denying their attraction for one another.
This is nothing new, but the chemistry between stars Daniel Radcliffe
and Zoe Kazan makes their friendship and budding romance believable, something
that most star-studded romantic comedies seem to miss entirely for the sake of
just having the big-name actor and actress of the week. When you get right down to it, What If works precisely because it
embraces romantic comedy conventions and is determined to make the best version
it possibly can. And this goes for the
comedy as well, as the film has a witty script that rapid-fires jokes that are
consistently funny and delivered with the self-aware sincerity of close friends
trying to make each other laugh.
Unfortunately, despite the film’s loving embrace of the
oft-overbaked rom-com conventions, it also falls into one of the genre’s
inherent pitfalls: emphasizing the inherent differences in the sexes. Both Radcliffe and Kazan have a best friend
archetype to bounce their woes off of; Radcliffe’s dude-bro friend is
constantly encouraging him to make a move on Kazan, even though she already has
a boyfriend; Kazan’s sister is consistently trying to make moves on Radcliffe,
which stokes a jealousy in Kazan. These
conventions wouldn’t be so bad if every single conversation they had wasn’t
about making stereotypical assumptions based on the other lover’s sex, and then
using the next scene to affirm those assumptions. This ball gets bounced back and forth for the
entire duration of the film, and it gets tiresome if you realize that men and
women truly can just be friends without any sort of romantic involvement. The point of a romantic comedy is to ensure
that the leads end up together by the end, but by framing the central conflict
around whether or not the two leads can maintain a friendship, the film
cheapens that genuine friendship by emphasizing a missing sexual component.
Inherent flaws aside, I liked What If. It’s about as good
as the romantic comedy genre gets, and while that isn’t high praise, I found
this film to be a worthy-enough distraction.
Probably worth a rental if this is your sort of thing.
How do you think Daniel Radcliffe’s post-Potter career is
shaping up? Let me know in the comments
below.
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