by Cain Noble-Davies
Worth: $9.00
FilmInk rates movies out of $20 — the score indicates the amount we believe a ticket to the movie to be worth
Cast:
Jennifer Lopez, Owen Wilson, Chloe Coleman, Maluma, Sarah Silverman
Intro:
… starts out on a decent footing and then proceeds to trip arse over teakettle in full view, from the meandering and occasionally pretentious dialogue, to the ‘slam the hook into the audience’s head’ soundtrack, to its increasingly annoying lack of self-awareness.
Owen Wilson appeared opposite Salma Hayek in Mike Cahill’s Bliss. Apparently unsatisfied with just how mismatched that romantic pairing was, he’s not only found an even bigger mismatch in Jennifer Lopez, but indeed, an entire production built on emphasising it.
Of course, that line of thinking is part-and-parcel with the ‘point’ of the film itself, contrasting Wilson’s Charlie and his humdrum life as a single father and math teacher, with Lopez’s Kat Valda and her social-media-drenched existence as a pop star.
This kind of off-kilter romantic dynamic is a common fixture of the rom-com, and to their credit, the Marry Me filmmakers and cast at least have enough awareness to make the respective glamour and dorkability fit together.
But chemistry can only go so far, especially when the script that they’re working with suffers from Will Gluck Syndrome [WGS, TM]. Basically, it tries to comment on the heavy artificiality of media stardom, social media in particular, with Charlie dropping quite a few Boomerisms about the kind of validation that environment creates. However, that fails to reconcile the fact that the film itself, in all aspects, is just as artificial, if not more so. The contrived romance, the strict adherence to rom-com cliches (right down to a finale involving running through an airport), the frustratingly milquetoast perspective on social media and its effects on people; it’s more than a little hypocritical, and without anywhere near enough charm to make it palatable.
It doesn’t help that what little it does end up saying (most of which gets summed up over the course of a non-sequitur-heavy press conference early on) fades into the background over time. As sanded-off as its commentary is, it at least gestured towards interesting ideas regarding celebrity and finding contentment in more than just having (x) amount of followers. But then the writers, whose collective credits range from Orange is the New Black to Halle Berry’s Catwoman, throw all their chips into the romance, which fails to really go anywhere. Outside of the mismatch and the fast-fading chemistry, there’s not a whole lot to this relationship that makes it worth sticking with for this length of screen-time. And no, the immensely repetitive reggaeton soundtrack doesn’t make up for it either.
Marry Me starts out on a decent footing and then proceeds to trip arse over teakettle in full view, from the meandering and occasionally pretentious dialogue, to the ‘slam the hook into the audience’s head’ soundtrack, to its increasingly annoying lack of self-awareness. Every sin it tries to poke fun at regarding media fascination with celebrities is only echoed by its ‘average-as guy ends up with hot chick’ conceit, and while the main stars are certainly trying to make this work, there’s not enough support behind them to do so. In comparison to a source material that is funnier, more to-the-point, and available for free online, that’s just not good enough. When it all ends with the song ‘Nobody’s Watching (Marry Me)’, it’s less a denouement than a self-fulfilling prophecy.
