Is it a cheat, or an impressive tightwire act, to spoof romantic comedy tropes while also fully embracing them? Rebel Wilson stars as Natalie, a New York-based architect who has resigned herself, as a plus-sized woman, to being invisible to others—until she wakes up from a knock on the head to find herself living inside a romantic comedy where her apartment is improbably massive, flowers line every street and men see her as beautiful. Erin Cardillo’s screenplay generally only takes love taps at the genre she’s sending up, rather the body blows landed by an acidic satire like
They Came Together, so the jokes rarely feel truly inspired. But Wilson is delightful, nicely underplaying the role of a cynic responding to the unfamiliar role of being in a romantic triangle between a hunky, rich client (Liam Hemsworth) and her nice-guy co-worker (Wilson’s
Pitch Perfect costar Adam Devine). You might see the moral of the story coming from a mile away, but that doesn’t mean it’s an unwelcome one—or that you can’t both chuckle at the idea of people spontaneously breaking into a production number, and chuckle at the production number itself.
By
Scott Renshaw