When the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie, that's a cliche---Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler as love interests stuck in a typical romantic comedy setting in They Came Together
How do you spoof something that is already making fun of itself (albeit inadvertently) and make it completely hysterical and on target? The newest spoof film, They Came Together has an excellent answer to that question. This is a film that spoofs romantic comedies, alright inadvertent satire in its own right to a tee and has more memorable moments than any comedy in recent history. Not surprising since this comes from the makers of Wet Hot American Summer, a spoof of summer camp films such as Meatballs and Gorp, another genre that is seemingly hard to spoof. As written by the team of Michael Showalter and David Wain, who also worked on the hysterical TV show "Stella" together, this is a spoof film that revitalizes the genre just when it seems to have been completely dead.
The film stars Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler as Joel and Molly, two nice people living in New York who accidentally end up at a party both dressed as Benjamin Franklin after a disastrous fight on the street. While having dinner with friends Kyle and Karen (Bill Hader and Ellie Kemper,) they discuss their story in hilarious, beautifully cliched detail.
It's amazing to see just how many romantic comedy cliches Showalter and Wain (also the director) have managed to come up with here. Joel works for a mega candy corporation that will run Molly's store out of business. Molly is an unbelievable klutz who knocks everything she touches over. Joel is competing for a promotion at work but must stop the competitive and manipulative Trevor (Michael Ian Black) who has slept with Joel's ex-girlfriend (Cobie Smulders) multiple times. Molly's accountant Eggbert (Ed Helms and whether or not you think that name is inherently funny is a testament to how much you will laugh at this film) has an incredible crush on her but she's not interested. Joel even has a younger brother named Jake (Max Greenfield) who isn't as successful as him. All these tired bits are done in hilarious bashing as characters even explain that they are acting out a cliche right that second. For example, Jake consistently argues with Joel about his greater success with lines such as "why can't I be exactly like you, big brother..it makes me mad."
There is one scene in particular that is worth the price of admission alone. I will only say that it involves Roland (Christopher Meloni,) Joel's boss and a Halloween costume. I don't think I've ever laughed harder in my life at an individual scene than I did that one. However, the film is filled with about 50 more huge laughs and 25 smaller laughs. The film knows that the romantic comedy genre is worn and takes it on with full force, bashing every little detail that have made people want to gouge their eyes out over the years.
They Came Together is a massively funny comedy that had me laughing out loud more times than I could even count. My only complaint is that when the 80 minutes was up, I wanted to see more of this film. It even got to the point where I was laughing so hard at such a constant rate I was afraid one of the other 50 or so people in the theater were going to complain to management. Good thing they were laughing just as hard as I was.
(5 out of 5 Stars, The film is rated R for language and sexual content)
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