Set It Up (2018)
Directed by Claire Scanlon
Two overworked and underpaid assistants come up with a plan to get their bosses off their backs by setting them up with each other.
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As the rise of VOD distribution forces an ongoing conversation about what constitutes cinema, Scanlon’s film feels cannily modern in its medium-straddling, even as its storytelling, patchworked from such influences as “The Devil Wears Prada,” “Cyrano de Bergerac” and “The Parent Trap,” breaks little new ground.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: While Set It Up jokes that it’s like an adult version of The Parent Trap, it reminded me way more of The Devil Wears Prada (except as a romantic comedy, and the leads are pulling a “Cher Horowitz” on their bosses).
Some of the movie’s gags seem lifted from Devil Wears Prada directly — Charlie has to complete a science project for his boss’s child; Harper has to return things and make reservations with only the vaguest suggestions of what place her boss is thinking of — and so, if Set It Up isn’t quite as funny as The Devil Wears Prada , it does at least ring truer to life.
Harper (Deutch) and Charlie (Powell) are both beleaguered assistants, trapped in tough gigs serving bosses who don’t understand that “The Devil Wears Prada” wasn’t meant to serve as an instruction manual for unhinged professionals.
Harper is stuck in her own good-natured The Devil Wears Prada story; she is the multitasking slave to Kirsten (Lucy Liu), the czarina of an online sports journalism empire.
In the film, Harper’s boss (Lucy Liu) is a sports journalist who’s shown as someone who’s the best at her job and an actual role model for her young assistant, even when she is channelling Meryl Streep in The Devil Wears Prada.
This latest iteration involves that bickering-friends-turned-lovers trope familiar from Meg Ryan movies ( You’ve Got Mail and When Harry Met Sally ); the matchmaking element from Clueless and The Parent Trap ; and a lovably nerdy female protagonist reminiscent of Josie Geller ( Never Been Kissed ) and Laney Boggs ( She’s All That ).
Set It Up feels like a return to that era, when smaller-scale star vehicles like Picture Perfect , You’ve Got Mail , One Fine Day , and While You Were Sleeping were regular fixtures at the multiplex.
It’s a feel-good throwback to Nineties romantic comedies like When Harry Met Sally and You’ve Got Mail that left me — and a never-to-be-disclosed number of Netflix viewers — warm and nostalgic for the simple pleasure of falling in love.
Rom-coms pretty much defined mainstream cinema in the ’90s with classics like When Harry Met Sally, You’ve Got Mail, Sleepless in Seattle, One Fine Day, and Jerry Maguire.
Scanlon blends the lower-key hangout vibe of ‘90s rom-coms like When Harry Met Sally and Four Weddings And A Funeral with the glossy, heightened aesthetic of post-aughts fare like 27 Dresses and How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days .
Like Kate Hudson in How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days , or Jennifer Garner in 13 Going on 30 , Harper yearns to do important, substantial work, yet is thwarted by the realities of her job, which include fetching dinner for Kirsten and pacing around the office wearing her boss’s Fitbit so her trainer won’t get angry.
There’s the bro-friendly raunch-com variety, launched by The 40-Year-Old Virgin in 2005; its apex, as far as romcom material goes, is probably 2007’s Knocked Up and 2008’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno.
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There’s the bro-friendly raunch-com variety, launched by The 40-Year-Old Virgin in 2005; its apex, as far as romcom material goes, is probably 2007’s Knocked Up and 2008’s Zack and Miri Make a Porno.
This latest iteration involves that bickering-friends-turned-lovers trope familiar from Meg Ryan movies ( You’ve Got Mail and When Harry Met Sally ); the matchmaking element from Clueless and The Parent Trap ; and a lovably nerdy female protagonist reminiscent of Josie Geller ( Never Been Kissed ) and Laney Boggs ( She’s All That ).
Give her shoulder pads and a time machine and she could muscle into His Girl Friday.
Set It Up is kind of like The Parent Trap (which the movie acknowledges) but instead of two Lindsay Lohans, the plot centers on two assistants who make their workaholic bosses fall in love in order to improve their own lives.
Harper jokes about having to “Cyrano” their bosses — she has to eventually explain to Charlie what that means — and together they note that their plot is not entirely unlike The Parent Trap , though they seem to have only seen the 1998 Lindsay Lohan version and not the 1961 Hayley Mills original.
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She’s well matched with Powell ( Scream Queens ) , who looks like a hunky Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off and has mastered the art of being snarky without being smarmy.
Scanlon blends the lower-key hangout vibe of ‘90s rom-coms like When Harry Met Sally and Four Weddings And A Funeral with the glossy, heightened aesthetic of post-aughts fare like 27 Dresses and How To Lose A Guy In 10 Days .