Isn't It Romantic (2019)
Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson
For a long time, Natalie, an Australian architect living in New York City, had always believed that what she had seen in rom-coms is all fantasy. But after thwarting a mugger at a subway station only to be knocked out while fleeing, Natalie wakes up and discovers that her life has suddenly become her worst nightmare—a romantic comedy—and she is the leading lady.
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17 films that influenced Isn't It Romantic
What critics say influenced Isn't It Romantic
A “My Best Friend’s Wedding” gag repeated in too many rom-coms to number almost works — “karaoke night.”
DeVine mostly gets to represent a schlubbier version of the stolid leading-man type – imagine Dermot Mulroney in My Best Friend’s Wedding – thus allowing Hemsworth to steal his scenes as the outrageously good-looking billionaire who can’t stop calling Natalie “beguiling”.
As a pseudo-reluctant example of yet another formulaic romantic comedy, “Isn’t It Romantic” features fewer montages than you might expect, but there’s one right about the first-act turning point in which jaded New York architect Natalie (Rebel Wilson) lays out all the reasons she hates movies like “The Wedding Singer” and “My Best Friend’s Wedding.”
There are nods to "Pretty Woman," "27 Dresses," "My Best Friend's Wedding" and plenty more here, as well as the rom-com staple of the out-of-nowhere big group sing-along.
Be it Pretty Woman or My Best Friend's Wedding .
Long Island City now looks like Notting Hill, there are perfectly choreographed karaoke sequences straight out of “My Best Friend’s Wedding” and a total sexpot (Liam Hemsworth) is enamored with her.
Once, Natalie was a little girl who loved watching Pretty Woman and fantasizing about the romantic life she’d lead as an adult.
As a child, Natalie was a wide-eyed Pretty Woman fan with dreams of finding her Richard Gere.
The problem isn't rom-coms and the anti-empowerment dreams they hawk; it's the defeatist mantra that Natalie's mom (Jennifer Saunders) plants in her head, a reaction to the particular dream-hawking fantasies of Pretty Woman .
She’s dressed in “Pretty Woman” (post-makeover) wear, sent out into the street, where seagulls fly in heart-shaped flocks and “New York doesn’t smell like s–t any more!”
The movie constantly reminds us of superior rom-coms — everything from Pretty Woman to When Harry Met Sally to 500 Days of Summer — over the course of a sloppily written story that fails as both romance and comedy.
When she catches her friend (Betty Gilpin) watching a Notting Hill -type movie on her computer at the office, she snaps.
At barely 90-minutes the film is chockablock with references to rom-com classics like Pretty Woman and When Harry Met Sally , to newer features like 13 Going on 30 and Notting Hill that benefit rewatching to catch everything.
It knows these movies are pure formula, and it makes fun of that formula in myriad and amusing ways, including overt references to such predecessors as “Pretty Woman,” “Notting Hill” and “13 Going on 30.”
Along the way, we get nostalgic homages as Natalie grows up adoring “Pretty Woman” (1990), her co-worker religiously watches “The Wedding Singer” (1998) and her friends regularly reference “Notting Hill” (1999), “Sweet Home Alabama” (2002) and “13 Going on 30” (2004).
The film manages to pay tribute to/make gentle fun of films like “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” “Notting Hill,” and “13 Going on 30” while folding in some female empowerment, too.
When her assistant (Betty Gilpin) watches Sweet Home Alabama at work, Natalie calls the movie a “masterpiece of shit.”
With a script by Erin Cardillo, Dana Fox and Katie Silberman, “Isn’t It Romantic” demonstrates a clear affection and deep knowledge of romcoms from “The Wedding Singer” to “Sweet Home Alabama,” but this love isn’t blind.
Along the way, we get nostalgic homages as Natalie grows up adoring “Pretty Woman” (1990), her co-worker religiously watches “The Wedding Singer” (1998) and her friends regularly reference “Notting Hill” (1999), “Sweet Home Alabama” (2002) and “13 Going on 30” (2004).
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One day after work, Natalie’s mugged on the subway, and in the fracas, she bonks her head and wakes up in an amalgam of every 1980s and 1990s romantic comedy, from Pretty Woman to When Harry Met Sally…
The script — written by Erin Cardillo, with a strong rewrite by rom-com veterans Dana Fox (“What Happens in Vegas”) and Katie Silberman (“Set It Up”) — borrows heavily from “Pretty Woman” and “My Best Friend’s Wedding,” with references to “When Harry Met Sally…” and “Jerry Maguire,” among others, thrown in for good measure.
Writers Erin Cardillo and “How To Be Single’s” Dana Fox and Katie Silberman have fashioned a high concept romantic comedy that replaces the naive optimist of “Enchanted” in real world New York City with a cynic plunked into its glossiest Hollywood version.
Isn’t it Romantic es para la comedia romántica lo que la película Enchanted (2007) es para las películas sobre los cuentos de hadas y princesas de Disney.
The film has much in common with 1991’s Delirious , which saw a jaded writer get hit on the head, then wake up inside his soap opera, and Enchanted which winked at the romantic tropes of Disney movies and then subverted them.
Best-case scenario, “Isn’t It Romantic” would have been the reverse of “Enchanted,” wherein a Disney princess tried to adapt to the harsh reality of New York City — only here, a hardened cynic tries to wrap her head around a flash-sanitized version of the Big Apple, where someone has magically erased Manhattan’s distinctive rotting-garbage stench, and replaced the liquor stores and check-cashing joints in her neighborhood with cupcake cafés and bridal shops.
It may not break much new ground — its premise is another version of Amy Schumer’s “I Feel Pretty” (2018) with the magical realism of “Enchanted” (2007) — but it’s still an undeniably cute date movie.
We know the type of movie this is referring too… Pretty Woman , She’s All That and The Proposal are all examples which spring to mind.
Writers Erin Cardillo, Dana Fox, and Katie Silberman try to revive the spoof genre that was all the rage more than a decade ago thanks to Scary Movie and Disaster Movie franchise.
It mostly escapes the failures of the silly “Scary Movie” franchises by recognizing that it is not enough to refer to something; you have to have something to say about it.
This is obviously his niche and there’s a cleverness that films like Scary Movie or Not Another Teen Movie lack.
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And you don’t need to have memorized How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days or 27 Dresses or 13 Going on 30 to know the score here.
In the century's first decade, when movies such as 27 Dresses and How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days were as plentiful as roses in a Valentine's Day bouquet, Isn't It Romantic might have seemed like a bold corrective.
Contrast that with Brooks’ “Spaceballs,” where most of the jokes are broad slapstick and sight gags independent of “Star Wars.”