#They came together for free#
#They came together movie#

On a gag-to-gag basis, They Came Together can be hit or miss. (“Being married is great! That’s the point of view I represent!”) There’s even a pretty funny joke about Christopher Meloni crapping himself, which is either a desperate attempt at gross-out humor or a sly dig at the fact that so many seemingly genteel romantic comedies wind up relying on poop jokes for laughs. Along the way, all the hallmarks of rom-coms get playfully skewered, from the on-the-nose dialogue (“So, you’re finally dealing with those commitment issues!”) to the neatly categorized supporting cast. Joel and Molly both show up for their mutual friends’ Halloween party dressed as Ben Franklin, and they immediately hate each other, which is a sure sign that they’re destined for one another. He’s also just getting over a breakup, after catching his cold-fish girlfriend (Cobie Smulders) having passionate sex with his annoying office rival, Trevor (Michael Ian Black). Paul Rudd is Joel, “handsome, but in a non-threatening way,” and “vaguely, but not overtly Jewish.” He works for mega-conglomerate CSR - Candy Systems Research - and his company wants to take over Molly’s store.

#They came together for free#

Amy Poehler is Molly, described early on as “the cute, klutzy girl who drives you a little bit crazy, but you can’t help but fall in love with.” She owns a quaint little New York City bakery (named Upper Sweet Side) where she gives away everything for free and what little she does make goes to charity. They Came Together starts off as a variation on You’ve Got Mail (which itself was a variation on The Shop Around the Corner). Taking pretty much every rom-com trope and distilling it into highly concentrated ridiculousness, Wain’s film is both a takedown and a tribute: As with his summer-camp-movie spoof Wet Hot American Summer, you walk away with a renewed love for the genre. But David Wain’s rom-com spoof They Came Together, which on paper sounds like it’s way late to the party, sneaks up on you. Even without those films, we’ve groaned through the clichés enough times on our own. Whether it’s through direct parodies like Date Movie, or through reinventions like The 40 Year-Old Virgin, the genre has had enough holes poked in it over the years. It might seem like a small complaint, in a film that’s clearly going for out and out comedy, but without an emotional backdrop of any kind, it’s likely you’ll forget about it before the end of the year.It’s not so much that the world needs yet another spoof of romantic comedies. Characters are hilariously two dimensional and the plot is amusingly predictable, but the unfortunate side effect is that They Came Together doesn’t quite hold together. The film’s main issue is what had to be sacrificed in order to create the ultimate romcom parody. The film relies on the audience having seen their fair share of romantic comedies, but if you can jump that hurdle, and don’t get too hung up on the fact that the film is basically one gag stretched over 90 minutes, there’s plenty of fun to be had. Most of the humour derives from the worst sins of the romantic comedy genre, whether that’s a visual gag, in the form of a ridiculous zoom into Rudd’s face, or the hilariously terrible exposition that occurs throughout. The jokes don’t always hit, but to say that they are uneven would be going too far. The film is a veritable who’s who of Saturday Night Live Stars, Apatow disciples and actors from every sitcom under the sun. The film is framed by a conversation over dinner with another couple played by Bill Hader and Ellie Kemper, and if you’re thinking that the cast is beginning to sound a little on the incestuous side, you ain’t seen nothing yet.

The sole purpose of the plot in They Came Together is to get you from joke to joke, and it does this admirably. When the pair finally meet, they hate each other, but…well you can pretty much guess the rest, and that’s kind of the point. Molly (Amy Poehler) is the lovable, ditsy owner of a quirky sweet shop, while Joel (Paul Rudd) works for a large corporation bent on closing down Molly’s shop.

#They came together movie#

Feature-length film parodies have been given a bad name of late, with the likes of Scary Movie 5 and Vampires Suck seemingly cornering the market, but David Wain’s knowing poke at the lovey dovey genre, has enough good gags to pull away from the rest of the crowd. They Came Together is an unapologetic parody that does for romantic comedies exactly what Airplane! did for disaster movies.