How To Be Single (2016), R, ★★1/2

Dakota Johnson and Rebel Wilson.

This movie is an interesting insight and commentary as how women can have a relationship with men from a single woman's point of view because most of the time we single men's point of view as to how they can get a woman to be in their own relationship. Based on the trailers, I was very worried because I did not laugh once when I was shown this teaser. It's seemingly a Valentine's chick-flick dedicated to women who have no choice but to get their own counterparts to have a relationship with. Even though this movie is a lot better than the Sex and the City movies and has a similar plot line, this movie has two sides of the coin as there is chemistry between the two main characters but the plot is fairly predictable and scattershot as to why some are the characters are not fully developed.

Alice (Dakota Johnson) is a New York paralegal who had recently dumped his boyfriend, Josh (Nicolas Braun). She has moved in with her sister, Meg (Leslie Mann), an OB/GYN, who is a single mother who wants to conceive a child via sperm donor. Alice befriends a co-worker named Robin (Rebel Wilson), who loves to party and have one night stands. Robin introduces Alice to the way of how trying to get a man works and also to Tom (Anders Holm), a bartender who is single who has a crush on Lucy (Alison Brie).

Back at Tom's bar, Lucy has a string of consecutive bad dates because of her algorithm of dating men from dating websites. As Meg is getting pregnant with her child, Alice continues to yearn deeply for Josh. She attends a Wesleyan alumni networking event, which she briefly converses with a man named David (Damon Wayans, Jr.) She briefly has a relationship with him as he has is singing to his daughter. He reminds her that she is not her mother and they both break up. What will it take for Alice to maintain and sustain a relationship?

Sisterly love. 

The movie had the potential to become a very good romantic comedy with providing an insight of how it is to be single. But, the movie relies too much on formula than plot and the result is that the movie is so meandering that there's not much focus on its storylines. There's too much going on like this is a soap opera. Actually, there's enough material to put on a decent miniseries on HBO, not a 2-hour movie. The only thing that made it decent to watch was the charm of these actors and not become overwhelmingly stale. However, there's too much comfort in its characters.

Dakota Johnson is a bit stale individually but when she has that rapport with Rebel Wilson, she clicks with her and their chemistry works. I think Wilson, even though she got annoying with her jokes at times, is the standout because she provides some hilarious background into the story especially with Johnson. Leslie Mann is fine but her story line is not necessary as the child insemination is more for another Judd Apatow movie. Alison Brie is attractive but her story is irrelevant to the movie and only to serve the title as an instruction booklet. I liked Damon Wayans Jr. as a gentle fatherly role and Nicholas Braun is not bad.

I cannot recommend this movie because the material lacks clarity in its screenplay and it needed to be more organized as to which characters are necessary to the main plot. Plus, even though the ending has a nice message, the movie is edited as some sort of random joke-fest and needed to be in a consistent tone. The movie has a nice outline of what it tries to be to serve the romantic comedy genre from a feminist standpoint, but the product lends itself to formulaic conventions that ultimately delivers as a mixed bag.

**1/2