Review: "They Came Together"

I’m not the right age to fully appreciate Wet Hot American Summer David Wain and Michael Showalter’s insanely true to detail send up of a very, very specific subset of movies set at summer camps. The films they lovingly parody were before my time and so my affection for them is at far more of a remove. They Came Together, Wain and Showalter’s follow up of sorts to Wet Hot featuring many members of that cast, more easily connects with a broader audience, but it’s also, in some regards, a less admirable, less ambitious effort. The film is every bit as specific in its comical ridiculousness, but it parodies a genre that is so much more obvious, and therefore tailor-made, for parody: the rom-com.

It’s an easier target than Wet Hot. However, Wain and Showalter largely avoid going for the easy or obvious joke. The film is broad enough that this could be any romantic comedy its poking fun at but filled with all sorts of tiny digressions that go after very exact works. That said, even when you can’t quite put your finger on what the film is making funny of, it still remains really funny. Wain and Showalter, as well as the many great comic talents they bring on board, have a background in sketch comedy, and it can be felt in the film’s go for broke quality. Don’t like one joke? Well there are a dozen more on their way to try to floor you. And the jokes run the gambit, from sly visual jokes to surreal, absurd blackout gags.  

They Came Together, starting with its unassumingly bland title, gets the fluffy genericness of rom-coms right, and it writes that into film’s every detail. Take the way everything is shot: the dull, pleasingly blindingly bright lighting and the carelessly under thought, boring directorial scheme of switching between one shots and two shots. Even the two main characters’ names Joel (Paul Rudd) and Molly (Amy Phoeler) remark upon the under-baked nature of the scripts for the genre – the characters never even receive last names. The couple’s story involve staples of the genre: Joel’s corporate company has designs to put out of business Molly’s candy store (a fantastic commentary on the inane, unlikely professions that often seem to only inhabit rom-coms). From there their close friends hope to set them up but they end up hating one another, but, of course, only to fall for each other. Only then for exceedingly pointless complications to set in, after which they get together. On the margins of the story, a revolving door of supporting players, including friends, siblings, and parents, arrive for one or two scenes to dissect all sorts of tropes from the genre.  

In the broad strokes, it’s every rom-com you’ve ever seen, and the film plays almost everything straight. If you passed this on television, you might be fooled for a while. But the devil is in the details, and They Came Together is constantly, slyly wild and flying off the handle. I’m not an avid watcher of the genre – among cinephile circles the genre has become one of the most poorly regarded and maligned – but I still found myself laughing hysterically. Much of this stems from the film working on another level. Much like Wain and Showalter’s previous effort, the humor comes from a general sense of out of left field silliness.  

But what really elevates the whole effort is how little disdain is shown. The film has affection for the works it’s mocking. It notes the idiocy and laugh at it, but it also kind of loves that idiocy. It’s easy to look down on something as too many spoofs do these days; it is another to make fun of something from a real place of good will and endearment.   

Grade: B