The film from director Todd Strauss-Schulson (“A Very Harold & Kumar Christmas”) and screenwriters Erin Cardillo and Dana Fox & Katie Silberman places Wilson at the center of a tricky balancing act. “Isn’t It Romantic” simultaneously ridicules and embraces the many, many clichés of the rom-com genre. It knows these movies are pure formula, and it makes fun of that formula in myriad and amusing ways, including overt references to such predecessors as “Pretty Woman,” “Notting Hill” and “13 Going on 30.” But by the end, it’s also pretty much delivered that exact same formula with sincere enthusiasm, which makes the whole exercise feel like a bit of pointless wheel-spinning.
It’s a tough feat to pull off, regardless of the genre. Edgar Wright managed it beautifully with his Three Flavours Cornetto trilogy of “Shaun of the Dead,” “Hot Fuzz” and “The World’s End.” “Isn’t It Romantic” mostly coasts on Wilson’s likability and the power of recognition: a particularly overused song, some hackneyed character traits, a well-worn narrative device or a tidy way of wrapping things up to achieve a happy ending, etc. But every once in a while, it has something to say about what’s problematic about these familiar film tropes. Why must the heroine always have a flamboyantly gay BFF, and why does he have no life of his own outside of hers? Why must she have a female office rival who hates her for no apparent reason, when they should be working together to topple the patriarchy?
Some food for thought here and there, but “Isn’t It Romantic” mostly serves pleasing, bite-sized nibbles.
Wilson gives it her all, though, as Natalie, a young, single woman living in a dingy New York apartment and working as an architect at a firm where no one appreciates her. That is, except for her work pal Josh (Wilson’s playful “Pitch Perfect” co-star Adam Devine), who clearly has a crush on her while dwelling in the friend zone. One day on the way home from work, she gets mugged on a subway platform, bonks her head and wakes up in the hospital. Suddenly, the world around her has transformed. It’s a wonderland of flattering lighting and flirty doctors. Flowers and cupcakes are everywhere. The bustling NYC streets smell like lavender and the tinkling piano of Vanessa Carlton’s catchy “A Thousand Miles” follows her wherever she goes. Her surly neighbor from across the hall is now a stereotypically wisecracking gay man who loves makeover montages (Brandon Scott Jones, who gets plenty of zingers). And in one of the sharpest insights, Natalie now lives in an impossibly spacious, chic apartment with insane amounts of closet space for her vast shoe collection—the kind of real estate very few people could realistically afford.
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