Blu-Ray Review – How to be Single

Blu-ray Reviews, Film, Reviews, Top Story

The one downside to the success of Bridesmaids has been one thing: every terrible script with an all-female cast has seemingly been greenlit in the off-chance it too catches lightning in a bottle. The reason why films like How to be Single and Bachelorette wind up tanking at the box office spectacularly, and Bridesmaids didn’t, is simple: Bridesmaids had some semblance of quality to it. How to be Single is an awful film that is worth avoiding at all costs.

Simple premise. Alice (Dakota Johnson) decides she wants to be single in New York City. After deciding to indulge in as much as sex as she possibly can, and finding it empty, she decides to try and find “the one” in NYC using a variety of methods. Shenanigans ensue, of course, and we follow Alice as she explores life as a single woman. There’s a subplot with Brie Larson thrown in there that has zero connection to her, as well, and feels thrown on to make it feature length.

The film’s problem is that it wants to be a terrific subversion of the romantic comedy but winds up being attached to the rom-com format too much for its own good. This is a film that wants to embrace the sort of feminist narrative that female themed films are rallying around …. while also trying to find an audience outside of women. It leaves the film sort of half baked in a way; it wants to have its cake and eat it too in that way.

Throw in some painful comedy from Rebel Wilson, and Leslie Mann about two years too old to play the aging the party girl, and you have a film that’s a painful viewing. It may not be the worst film of 2016 … but it’ll be in the team picture when all is said and done.

A handful of EPK pieces, nothing more, are included as extras. Mainly it’s how “great” Rebel Wilson is.

Warner Home Video presents How to be Single. Directed by Christian Ditter. Written by Dana Fox, Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein based on the novel of the same name. Starring: Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson, Damon Wayans Jr., Anders Holm, Alison Brie. Running length: 120 minutes. Released: May 24, 2016.