Celeste and Jesse Forever’s notion of what it means to lay out a romantic comedy may not coincide with your own. Despite successful scenes, the film is an illustration that merely finding an innovative approach to a hackneyed genre does not necessarily produce a fresh nor particularly cohesive result.
A film starring Rashid Jones and Andy Samberg, Celeste profiles a couple on the way to divorce court who are still very much codependent. Some novel stuff is offset by essentially a thin, erratic screenplay that too often veers off into loose-limbed detours. Jones’ reluctantly reenters the dating game after Samberg suddenly decides to marry a one-night stand who got pregnant. Her reactions are amusing and insightful at first, then run out of gas the more they’re repeated into the ground. The couples’ wear-it-like-a-placard friendship survives throughout the film and actually seems to intensify the more Samberg moves into his new relationship and the more Jones’ life gets complicated. A side story involves Emma Roberts as a teen starlet for whom Jones’ employer serves as publicist, and Jones at first as an “older woman” adversary and eventually as a nurturer/babysitter. A scandal that erupts involving a suggestive graphic in an important ad she places is about as believable as the tooth fairy. But at least Jones has a job. Her reluctance to bear the slacker Samberg’s kids is cited by her as reason for the breakup. Enough to make you flinch a little but it doesn’t help Samberg is about as emotive as a ramen noodle. When he finally stands up for himself it’s as if the Red Sea is parting. Our shock doesn’t last long. Before we know it we’re off to several scenes with co-screenwriter Will McCormack playing an amusing pot dealer friend to Jones, and Elijah Woods playing the obligatory gay co-worker/confidant.
Not all is shabby with this hard-trying effort co-written by Jones (the daughter QuIncy Jones and Mod Squad’s Peggy Lipton). Chris Messina (recently of Ruby Sparks, where he plays Paul Dano’s brother) is along for the ride as a guy who admittedly takes yoga classes to meet women. Yet he demonstrates a patient fondness for Jones and actually shows her a good time.
Good times are infrequent in Celeste and Jesse Forever. The void is occasionally filled with surgically precise snapshots of the actual emotions and nuances of a breakup between two people still very much in love. Too often, though, the scalpel goes flying off into a waiting room of ads with hidden penises, bimbo teen millionaires, and a patchwork of new cliches replacing the old ones.
2.5 Wispy Contrivances (out of 5)