Review of Sleeping with Other People (2015) by Filipe C — 15 Dec 2015

'Sleeping With Other People' is a romantic/sex comedy starring Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie. It focuses on their relationship and the events and circumstances that force the way they interact to change. I went into this film expecting to get an unoriginal, formulaic rom-com with mildly entertaining humour at the most, and unlikeable characters. But I was pleasantly surprised by this film, now it is no game-changing rom-com but I actually enjoyed watching this almost the whole way through. This movie had the comedy in some capacity, it had the romance, the sex, and a basic plot, but it was the likeable characters that tied the whole thing together.

Rom-Com's nowadays seem to recycle the same overused jokes and comedic moments and it just makes for a dreadful movie because you know the punchline before it hits. But here we had multiple pretty funny moments spread throughout the film that got me to laugh quite a few times. There was no moment that got me crying of laughter but a lot of these moments are worth a good laugh because I didn't see them coming. Is it void of bad ineffective jokes? No. It has its misses here and there and it has a few comedic sequences that last for around a minute too long, but I laughed on more occasions than not. One thing I would say is that to me it didn't feel consistently funny, like, there weren't long 20 minute sections where it focused on the humour alone, it switched between romantic and comedic moments constantly, occasionally bringing them together. The romance I did like in this film, I was interested seeing how the scenes with Sudeikis and Brie together played out and also how the scenes played out when they were separated. It was handled well, was balanced well with comedic moments and the big driver for my interest in the romance was the characters.

Jake (Jason Sudeikis) and Lainey (Alison Brie) were quite interesting characters and also very likeable. They both seemed like fun, lively people and even though they get a little silly here and there, they seem pretty grounded and it helped to keep me interested in the film. Even though the plot was fairly basic, because these characters were interesting and not made dumb just to get some cheap jokes it made the plot seem more unique and different and I really liked that. I would have liked this movie more and given it a higher score if it wasn't for the last 10 minutes or so where I felt the film lost that uniqueness and went all unoriginal. I thought it was finishing off on a strong note until it went for a cliche predictable ending that really annoyed me and did have an affect on my overall enjoyment.

In the end, this was a fairly good romantic comedy. It had a few issues with the comedy but overall it got me to laugh quite a few times throughout, the romantic story was interesting enough and the characters were very likeable. Some pacing issues and a crappy ending bring it down but overall it was enjoyable. - 6.1.