Review: They Came Together (2014)

I’m really riding out this Parks and Recreation obsession right now. I’ve moved onto the phase of looking up the entire cast’s filmography and consuming it as quickly as possible. Don’t worry, I’ll be fine…

They Came Together (2014) is a spoof rom com of sorts, starring Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd as a couple telling their friends over dinner one night about the story of how they met. They claim their story is just like a romantic comedy, and so the movie plays out their telling of the events. As we all like to do, many of the details are exaggerated, which is the core of the comedy in this movie.

Molly (Amy Poehler) runs her own boutique sweet store in New York City called Upper Sweet Side, and Joel (Paul Rudd) just so happens to work for a huge corporate business who are trying to shut Molly’s business down. It was hate at first sight!

So, here’s what I loved about this movie. The cast was amazing. It had so many of my favourite TV faces in (Cobie Smulders, Ed Helms, Jack McBrayer, Max Greenfield, Adam Scott, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, just to name a few) that I could have happily watched just to spot them all. The comedy style was right up my street. It almost has a Muppets feel to it, it’s so literal, which I realise will probably put a lot of people off straight away, but honestly, I love that kind of humour. 

Just a really quick example off the top of my head: Mollie is chatting with her colleague at the sweet store and her colleague warns her that Joel is right outside. Mollie gaps in horror and exclaims “But I look like a chimney sweep!” and then we see Mollie, literally dressed as a chimney sweep, with soot on her face and everything. It just tickles me!

I think the humour more than makes up for the predictable plot, but I don’t even think that needs to be apologised for. There’s a line Mollie says very early on in the movie that clearly indicates where the plot is going, so it was deliberate anyway.

My one gripe with They Came Together, and it pains me to say, is that some of the jokes fall so flat they’re quite painful. One minute I was actually crying from laughing so hard, and the next, a joke would fall so flat I winced and kind of wanted to pretend the moment never happened.

I imagine this movie really splits opinions, but my score will rest somewhere in the middle.

Bonus screenshot:

Review: Cooties (2015)

You know when you say you have to be in a certain mood to watch certain genres of film? What sort of mood do you have to be in to want to watch a silly horror comedy? A weird one, probably! I don’t do horror at all, but when it’s a comedy I’ll give it a go. Throw in a couple of my favourite TV actors at the same time, and sure, count me in! That’s how I ended up watching Cooties the other night.

Cooties was never a thing in school for me, is it more of an American term? We still had the whole ‘don’t go near Sally’ but it was normally an actual disease like the mange or rabies that kids would decide upon. Anyway, Cooties is a fun little zombie-like comedy in which an entire school gets infected with Cooties, turning the children into flesh eating monsters. Trapped in the school, the teachers, including Clint (Elijah Wood), Wade (Rainn Wilson), Lucy (Alison Pill) and Tracy (Jack McBrayer) are left fighting for their lives.

I would firstly like to thank Cooties for making me never want to eat a chicken nugget again. Those opening credits were possible the most grimm thing I have ever seen, and was actually the most horrible part of the whole movie! Shudder. 

The plot and the general premise had all the elements of a winner, but also a stinker, and honestly I think it fell somewhere in the middle. It was funny, but it never made me laugh out loud. Okay, I laughed out loud once. But really, when is a kid shouting the ‘C’ word not funny?! It wasn’t scary either, which isn’t a complaint from me! I feel like it’s more of a horror spoof, but without the stupidness of actual spoof movies, if that makes sense. It was really enjoyable though!

I liked how it poked fun of other horror films. How many times have you sat watching a horror and just thought, if they simply took their mobile phone out of their pocket and made a quick call, they would be perfectly safe? Cooties knows how you feel, man. It deals with that for you. It also pays homage to a lot of 80’s action films, which is pretty funny actually. Rainn Wilson get’s some cheesy one liners that will make you smile.

Without giving spoilers, I just don’t know how to feel about the ending. I’m not sure if it was laziness in the writing, or simply opening itself up to a sequel, but I’m undecided. All in all though, Cooties was much better than I thought it would be, and is a half decent popcorn comedy.