What If (2013)
Directed by Michael Dowse
Medical-school dropout Wallace has been repeatedly burned by bad relationships. So while everyone around him, including his roommate Allan, seems to be finding the perfect partner, Wallace decides to put his love life on hold. It is then that he meets Chantry, an animator who lives with her longtime boyfriend Ben. Wallace and Chantry form an instant connection, striking up a close friendship. Still, there is no denying the chemistry between them, leading the pair to wonder, what if the love of your life is actually your best friend?
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The over-reliance on cutesy pop-culture references can get in the way of honest conversation, forcing the two to surprisingly interact at a screening of The Princess Bride (because that’s a hip reference right?).
At first, Wallace knows it's foolish to pine after a woman already in a committed relationship, but when he runs into her weeks later (at a screening of "The Princess Bride" no less, perhaps in a sly nod to Rob Reiner) it turns out the flame hasn't been entirely extinguished.
Their second, in a film that nearly overdoses on cute, occurs at a screening of "The Princess Bride" (perhaps a shout-out to "When Harry Met Sally" director Rob Reiner).
What if it all but comes out and brags about that debt by centering an important early scene around The Princess Bride , by WHMS director Rob Reiner?
Later, after both attend a screening of The Princess Bride solo (a little on the nose, granted), the connection grows and the two agree to be friends, although its perfectly obvious that theres more to it than that.
They’re clearly serious, and yet, as she spends more and more time hanging out with Wallace — attending a revival screening of “The Princess Bride,” or noshing on various deep-fried foodstuffs — Chantry finds that she connects with her new friend on a quirky conversational level distinct from any of her other relationships.
What if this unpersuasive non-chemistry distracts in no way from a generic romcom that owes its themes, though neither its wit nor its insight, to When Harry Met Sally... and its study of how a platonic guyfriend secretly really wants to date his platonic galfriend?
It also speaks more clearly to what the film is about — it’s “The Friend Zone, The Movie.” It’s like a millennial When Harry Met Sally… (a comparison every other reviewer has made, and which every other review to come after will make, but that’s because it’s there, dammit), only one half of the main duo wants something more out of their bond right from the start.
And so we get movies like When Harry Met Sally..., My Best Friend's Wedding and this one, which posit that under every male-female friendship rests a restless libido looking to bust loose with the force of the Alien chestburster.
What If is When Harry Met Sally… for the current generation.
From this moment on, What If takes a page—or, rather, the whole book—from When Harry Met Sally…, repetitiously posing the question about whether men and women can be friends without benefits.
In a lot of ways I would compare his trajectory with that of Will Gluck’s, a parallel made more relevant due to that director’s work on Friends with Benefits.
But lately Hollywood has been taking a crack at that unique premise with mixed results, most notably with "Friends With Benefits" and "No Strings Attached," both released within months of each other and both not very good.
(It evokes the scene in “Annie Hall” where Woody Allen cooks lobsters at home with his latest date, failing to re-create the same thrill he shared with Diane Keaton.)
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(The gag is an updating of one from Arthur Hiller’s “The Lonely Guy,” where it was fresh and better used.)
As for the screwball elements, there is a certain amount of homage paid to classics like Bringing Up Baby and The Thin Man in Wallace and Chantrys banter.
Even "The Scarlet Letter" understood that the most piously bland audience-stand-in Everyman protagonists still need a bit of kink to keep them interesting.
As for the screwball elements, there is a certain amount of homage paid to classics like Bringing Up Baby and The Thin Man in Wallace and Chantrys banter.
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As if Radcliffe’s very non-Potter-esque roles on the stage (“Equus,” “How To Succeed in Business Without Really Trying”), in the horror film “The Woman in Black” and as the beat poet Allen Ginsberg in “Kill Your Darlings” hadn’t proved this talented actor’s versatility, a new romantic comedy will again confirm Harry Potter is indeed history.
The first is John Carpenter's "The Thing" and a particularly gruesome scene where an attempt to use a defibrillator results in the loss of two arms, a scene our protagonist, Wallace (Daniel Radcliffe), shows to his young nephew despite being told not to by the boy's mother, his sister.