Rather than the standard march toward monogamy, Dan Mazer’s film begins with the wedding and proceeds to ask, like the old advice column, can this marriage be saved? Newlyweds Nat (Rose Byrne) and Josh (Rafe Spall) are blatantly ill-suited for one another. Glamorous Nat is a Type A corporate go-getter; nebbishy Josh is a writer with one published novel and a bad case of writer’s block.
Mazer wrote “Borat” and has undeniable flair when it comes to excruciating social embarrassment. There’s a paralyzing scene of a charades game undone by Josh’s attempt at a pun based on a British slang term for female anatomy. And Minnie Driver, as Nat’s married sister, gets great mileage out of bitter lines and an unlikely yen for Justin Bieber.
Byrne strives to make her rather sour character someone the audience wants to be happy, going all-out on any scene depicting Nat’s guilty conscience. Spall has better lines and situations, but it’s hard to accept Josh as a writer when words fail him with such consistency.
As romance, this misses the mark by a pretty wide margin, even once better matches, in the gorgeous forms of Simon Baker and Anna Faris, show up for the central couple. As pure comedy, it’s a hoot.