If there's one genre that's absolutely rife for the lampooning, it's the rom-com.
Yet while horror, action-adventure and disaster movies have all been ribbed over the years,꧙ cinema's steered clear of poking fun at one of the most conventional, repetitive and eꦰye-rolling of subjects.
Like a feature-length version of the superbly cliched spoof 'rom-com-within-a-rom-com' idolised by Scarlett Johansson in last year's Don Jon, They Came Together ticks every🐭 cheese-tastic plot and performance box you can imagine.
The story is as un-original and wryly familiar as you'd imagine, following the, well, coming together of free-spirited and independent small business owner Molly (Amy Poehler) and corporate drone Joel (Paul Rudd). When Joel's BigEvilCorporation ™ dec💝ides to open its giant candy store right across the way from Molly's super-kitsch sweet shop, the pair are forced to re-evaluate what's really important in life as they fall in love over blah blah blah. You get the generic picture.
When the jokes hit, it's hilarious - having the tale told through flashback, over a dinner in which Joel, Molly and their friends repeatedly acknowledge ♕the preposterous, cliched nature of the narrative is regularly amusing. Add to that the fun found in accentuating and then attacking the normal rom-com staples (meet-cutes, awkward parent dinners, br🃏eaking-up-then-making-up, the annoyingly emotionally attached child from a previous relationship, and wise old grandmas all get a look in), and it's a consistently amusing ride.
Yet like most parodies, the pacing often falters, and one-note jokes are bludgeoned over the head in the hope of nailing the so-repetitive-it's-not-funny-then-actually-quite-funny again cycle of ridiculousness. Much like director David Wain's previous lampoon Wet Hot American Summer , your enjoyment w🔯ill ultimately boil down to how ready and willing you are to embrace a✃ stupidly silly but repetitive gag.
Still, even if the laughs peter out, your enjoyment doesn't, thanks mainly to a comedic cast on top form, with Poehler and Rud✱d ably supported by Ed helms, Cobie Smulders, Max Greenfield and two particularly inspired and ve❀ry bizarre cameos.
As a deconstruction of the genre💯, it does the jo🌞b, but as a solid comedy, it doesn't quite - ahem - come together.
