91 min | PG-13 | September 10, 2021 | IFC Films
Milo gets dumped, then meets Wendy on a hookup app, and the two agree to be friends with benefits while pretending neither one wants more. The movie knows every beat of the rom-com it is copying and announces each one with on-screen text. Self-awareness is not the same thing as having something to say.
Milo Marks meets Wendy Brinkley on a dating app and the two strike a deal. They will sleep together and stay friends and feel nothing. Anyone who has seen a romantic comedy knows where this goes. Jonah Feingold builds the film as an open homage to When Harry Met Sally, complete with title cards, chapter headings, and a narrator who tells you what the characters refuse to admit. The film wants credit for knowing the formula. It still runs the formula start to finish.
Jaboukie Young-White plays Milo as a smug romantic who hides behind detachment. He delivers the rapid patter the script demands and lands the jokes. He cannot generate heat with a co-star the script keeps at arm’s length. Francesca Reale plays Wendy as the more grounded of the pair, and she finds a few real moments when the dialogue stops performing. Catherine Cohen plays Jessie and Brian Muller plays Hank as the best-friend couple who exist to comment on the leads. Cohen is the most alive presence in the cast because she plays a person instead of a thesis.
Feingold writes and directs his first feature with a heavy hand on the storybook conceit. The production design renders New York as a candy-colored fantasy of clean apartments and golden afternoons. Animated flourishes and cursive intertitles pop onto the screen to label each phase of the courtship. The score leans on plinking strings and twee piano that cue the audience to find everything charming. The technique stays consistent from the first frame to the last, and that consistency becomes the problem. Every choice points at whimsy and none of it points at feeling.
The film mistakes citation for wit. It names the genre it belongs to and assumes naming the trap means escaping it. The dialogue chases the cadence of screwball banter without earning the connection that makes banter matter. Milo and Wendy talk a great deal and reveal almost nothing. Feingold has the references down and never finds the pulse underneath them.