I Want You Back (2022)
Directed by Jason Orley
Peter and Emma thought they were on the precipice of life’s biggest moments – marriage, kids, and houses in the suburbs – until their respective partners dumped them. Horrified to learn that the loves of their lives have already moved on, Peter and Emma hatch a hilarious plan to win back their exes with unexpected results.
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10 films that influenced I Want You Back
What critics say influenced I Want You Back
Luckily, this is a shrewd, funny, and surprisingly perceptive romantic dramedy more in the vein of “When Harry Met Sally…” and particularly the 1997 Meg Ryan-Matthew Broderick gem “Addicted to Love.”
It’s as if When Harry Met Sally… lapsed into American Pie material, added a sluggish additional act, and threw in an SNL cameo that tries to do for this film what Keanu Reeves’s walk-on part did for Always Be My Maybe with laughably limp results.
A closer comparison—and in my opinion, the closest—would be the quintessential friends-to-lovers slow burn When Harry Met Sally…
As a moderately amusing twist on “Strangers on a Train” (the characters somewhat misjudgingly reference “Cruel Intentions,” though it does have a seduction angle), Emma and Peter plot to ingratiate themselves into the lives of each other’s exes, and then seduce them, aiming to coax them back into their old relationships.
And at some point during their dinners, nights at the movies and such, a “Strangers on a Train” plot is hatched.
Think "Strangers on a Train" with marriage instead of murder as the objective.
A kind of romantic take on the classic Strangers On A Train premise, I Want You Back is written by Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger, and it begins finding Emma (Jenny Slate) and Peter (Charlie Day) on some of the worst days of their respective lives.
It all feels like a silly riff on the likes of Strangers on a Train (1951) and Cruel Intentions (1999) — the latter of which the characters themselves mention — but the feel of I Want You Back rings closer to 2010’s severely under-appreciated Going the Distance .
The plot has hints of "Cruel Intentions" and "Strangers on a Train."
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: I Want You Back might bring to mind flicks like Set It Up , Crazy, Stupid, Love , Sleeping with Other People , and Plus One .
It’s the Judd Apatow formula all over again, only here, the memorable scenes are few (Jenny Slate singing and a surprise Pete Davidson appearance are about it), and as a result of the formula being so well-worn by now, there’s already far better examples of it out there ( Sleeping With Other People comes to mind, with its similarly-unprepared-for-a-relationship leads).
Even though one of the characters says their situation is “like Cruel Intentions , only sexier,” I Want You Back channels the power of Friends with Benefits and 90s romance.
It’s essentially a redo of Addicted to Love , as well as the first act of Friends with Benefits , but it then veers into being its own quirky thing.
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This is a break-up romcom, in the Forgetting Sarah Marshall vein: one that trades primarily in the end of relationships, rather than beginnings.
Director Jason Orley made a far more impressive debut with the terrific “Big Time Adolescence,” a Sundance hit you probably never heard of because it opened in movie theaters the same week they all closed back in 2020, but to my mind deployed the stunted, sad sack charms of Pete Davidson in far savvier ways than the star’s self-penned “The King of Staten Island.”
Think The Wedding Singer but subtler with the sophistication of The Holiday .
It won’t skyrocket to the top with the likes of When Harry Met Sally , You’ve Got Mail , or recently with Crazy Rich Asians .
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The crushed dumpees meet-cute in their misery and hatch a plot to go undercover to torpedo each other’s exes’ new relationships (Anne’s seeing theater artiste Logan and Noah’s with pastry queen Ginny) — sort of “Crazy, Stupid, Love” meets “Strangers on a Train.”
Emma will, in turn, ingratiate herself with Anne’s drama teacher boyfriend (Manny Jacinto, Bad Times at the El Royale ) by working on his production of Little Shop of Horrors and seduce him away.