Review: HOW TO BE SINGLE

How to be surprised by a Valentine's Day release


2 and a half stars


Mini Review:

You'd think a Valentine's Day release movie with Rebel Wilson will be a loud, predictable tale of people finding love in the most unlikely ways, especially because the trailer makes it look women being raunchy in New York. Thankfully it isn't. It is quite sharp in its observations, offers a conclusion about love and relationships that is not like any of the romances, and yet manages to make believe in love while you laugh at yourself.

Main Review:

That's a bar set high. The trailer was so raunchy and so in your face, I was not particularly looking forward to Rebel Wilson playing it loud and overly sexy and claiming to fuck any man. Thankfully, the movie isn't like that at all. It is about singles in New York missing all the cues on love and doing the wrong things, but it does not grate on your nerves like some other New York based Christmas/Valentine's Day movies we have seen in the last few years.

The film starts out rather innocuously enough with Alice (Dakota Johnson) showing up in New York freshly single. She meets Robin (Rebel Wilson) who is rapturously single. There's Tom the bartender who is carefully single, Meg who is single but wants not to be, and a host of other characters who either want to change their single status and cannot or who change their status but hate it or...

Well, like the proverbial Alice in Wonderland, Dakota Johnson also discovers herself in the process of finding love. 

Now if this were a regular romantic comedy, you would think A was meant for B, C was made for D and E was tailor-made perfect match for F.   

But it wouldn't be a good movie if everything went to plan, would it? 

Not once do you miss the popcorn because there's plenty of hasty making out sessions on screen, plenty of 'aww' moments and lots and lots of scenes that will make you sigh and sink deeper in the chair and you realise that the end is exactly what you were hoping for. 

There is sunshine and rain, and many, many giggles. And even though the movie is called, 'How to be single', it is a wonderful little Valentine's day movie.