Review of They Came Together (2014) by Norberto F — 18 Dec 2014

I'm a sucker for self-awareness. Meta movies, movies like Seven Psychopaths or 22 Jump Street, are great because they make fun of the genre conventions while still providing genuine emotion; the movie is an inside joke between the filmmakers and the audience, but it's not JUST an inside joke.

I think that's ultimately why I found They Came Together pretty lackluster. Whereas 22 Jump Street provided lots of jokes making fun of sequels, it had a heart of gold, telling a story that would still hold up without the meta jokes. They Came Together, on the other hand, doesn't have unique characters; its characters are exaggerations of tropes. Now, that's not necessarily a bad thing. Ultimately this is a spoof movie, like a better version of Epic Movie. It's a pretty good spoof. But even spoofs should try to connect with the audience and provide an emotional core, even if the parodying is the main objective. If they don't, they need to be incredibly funny to make it worthwhile.

And that's why I somewhat enjoyed They Came Together. There were some moments where I laughed really, really hard, sometimes just throwaway lines and sometimes visual gags (Ed Helms can be grating, but the shot of him zipping up his pants as he left the bathroom was hilarious for some reason). I can't dislike any movie that makes me laugh as much as this one did. On the other hand...the humor was really inconsistent. There were some lines that just didn't make me laugh at all, or went on far too long, or maybe just didn't suit my particular sense of humor. The 'stick up his ass' thing might be hilarious to a lot of people, but for me, it was so predictable. And Molly's incredibly specific, weird describing of her muffin order was funny, as was the barista calling out "#3!" like it's a common order, but they did NOT need to flash to the menu and see it written out. I get it. Another example of that: at the end, when the boss fires Trevor, then says, "Don't make me change my mind." It's a funny joke, but then Trevor ruins it by saying, "No, I WANT to change your mind - I want to keep my job." There were a lot of jokes that were spelled out too much. It's odd, because there were many times in the movie when I laughed really hard.

Maybe this would be better suited to a TV special or something, rather than a full-length movie. Even though it's a short movie, only 83 minutes long, it feels like a drawn-out SNL skit, especially with Amy Poehler, Kenan Thompson, and Bill Hader being in the cast. If you combined all the funniest moments of the movie and crammed them into a digital short or even a half-hour spoof, it'd be a wonderful spoof. As is, it's occasionally really funny, but lacks a heart to make you really root for the characters.