‘I Want You Back' (2022) Review

This is to say that there is enough that works here that you can see the effective screwball comedy trapped within a more conventional romance movie.

R - Comedy, Romance (116 minutes)

dir. Jason Orley

Starring: Charlie Day, Jenny Slate, Scott Eastwood, Gina Rodriguez

“Newly dumped thirty-somethings Peter and Emma team up to sabotage their exes’ new relationships and win them back for good.”

— Official Synopsis

Raquel S. Benedict wrote a great essay about a year ago on the sexless nature of the contemporary studio movie. She diagnoses the cinematic landscape as: “No one is ugly. No one is really fat. Everyone is beautiful. And yet, no one is horny. Even when they have sex, no one is horny. No one is attracted to anyone else. No one is hungry for anyone else. When revisiting a beloved Eighties or Nineties film, Millennial and Gen X viewers are often startled to encounter long-forgotten sexual content: John Connor’s conception in Terminator, Jamie Lee Curtis’s toplessness in Trading Places, the spectral blowjob in Ghostbusters. These scenes didn’t shock us when we first saw them. Of coursethere’s sex in a movie. Isn’t there always? The answer, of course, is not anymore.” Her focus is primarily on the action genre—the way superhero movies are increasingly puritanical other than their penchant for violence. But it’s not unique to the biggest movies, and it’s particularly interesting when looking at a genre that has a natural inclination toward characters sharing moments of intimacy: the romantic comedy. 

Are romantic comedies generally suffering from the same trend Benedict sees in our tentpoles? In trying to come up with a cohesive answer, I found myself realizing that there really just aren’t many major romantic comedies coming out anymore. Certainly, they aren’t the mainstay they were in the past few decades as counterprogramming to thrillers and action movies. As everything gets streamlined into the very specific sort of big-budget action movie that can still turn a huge profit in theaters, you have to turn to streamers to find the kind of genre variety that either is attempting to carry the torch for classic genres into the future or is trying to break new ground in old forms. February saw two notable romantic comedy releases just in time for Valentine’s Day: Universal’s Marry Me (which was released simultaneously in theaters and on Peacock) and Amazon’s I Want You Back (which was exclusively a streaming release). 

I Want You Back certainly aims for a kind of When Harry Met Sally vibe where Emma (Jenny Slate) and Peter (Charlie Day) play platonic friends who engage in a conspiracy to win back their exes and, you guessed it, fall for each other in the process. Emma plans to seduce Peter’s ex, Anne (Gina Rodriguez)’s new boyfriend Logan (Manny Jacinto), while Peter plans to become Emma’s ex Noah (Scott Eastwood)’s best friend who can convince him to dump his new girlfriend Ginny (Clark Backo). It’s a fun premise with a lot of potential from its two endlessly charming stars. Jenny Slate is more or less typecast here as a naturally hilarious woman going through an existential crisis about which direction to take her adulthood. This is good casting because Slate can play this role in her sleep and keep things watchable, but it also struggles to overcome the memory of previous movies that got Slate this offer: the excellent Gillian Robespierre comedies Obvious Child and Landline. Robespierre is a great director, but perhaps her most perfect talent is knowing exactly how to use Jenny Slate to maximum effect in every beat of a scene. Here, Slate is often let down by an inconsistent tone and energy.

Jason Orley directs I Want You Back’s script by Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, which feels torn between the impulse to take its premise to absurd screwball lengths and the impulse to be heartfelt and likable. It wants to be edgy and fun like When Harry Met Sally but also ridiculous and crazy like The Awful Truth and The Lady Eve before ending up sort of schmaltzy and sweet like Four Weddings and a Funeral. It’s trying to do a lot here without finding a balance between what often feel like disparate styles of romantic comedy and stars who oscillate back and forth between the energy of the scenes without finding a cohesive authenticity that leads them there. Slate finds this balance in a movie like Obvious Child, but the crazy is a lot more muted. Day is one of the best at heightened comedy you can possibly find—and when the film lets him off the leash it’s often laugh-out-loud funny. 

This is to say that there is enough that works here that you can see the effective screwball comedy trapped within a more conventional romance movie. Much like Noah Baumbach’s early film Mr. Jealousy, all of the actors want to embrace the absurd because their sympathetic problems are universal enough that the film’s basic plot feels plenty relatable to handle a tone that lets Day scream and Slate scheme in increasingly ridiculous way, but the film isn’t quite confident enough to get there. The energy never quite gels—even though its star power is enough to carry the scenes. Carrying the scenes as funny performers, though, is also a far cry from having the kind of chemistry where the audience needs the catharsis of fulfilled romance in this type of plot. Peter and Emma inch closer to a romantic relationship, not because there are many sparks flying, but because this is the template of a romantic comedy and what else could possibly happen? 

Orley certainly doesn’t seem to be part of some big conspiracy to de-sex the movies here, though it is interesting that the film falls into the general category that Benedict outlined. Perhaps, wisely, I Want You Back never comes close to depicting any kind of physical intimacy between its leads—beyond a smile. The chemistry isn’t there. In some ways, it’s like an anti-When Harry Met Sally. You sort of watch it and hope they can just be friends because they’re a good team—but not like that. 

I Want You Back (2022) is out now on Amazon Prime.