Cinema Sunday: They Came Together

 

Last week for Valentine's Day, Cinema Sunday put the spotlight on a romantic comedy, 27 Dresses. It was a moderately entertaining film that neatly checked off all the boxes of what one might expect from a romantic comedy. 

This week's Cinema Sunday takes a look at a movie that bludgeons all the romantic comedy boxes with a sledgehammer.  

They Came Together is a 2014 parody of  a romantic comedy film directed by David Wain starring Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd.

Molly owns a small-independent candy store, Upper Sweet Side, that is being targeted by CSR, a large candy corporation where Joel works.  

Joel lives with his girlfriend, Tiffany.

Tiffany cheats on Joel. 

Joel and Tiffany break up.  

Joel and Molly meet at a Halloween party. They fight. 

Then they go on a date. 

Then they break up. 

Then they date again.

Then they break up. 

Joel's back with Tiffany. 

Molly is engaged to her banker, Eggbert. 

Joel races to stop the wedding. 

Joel and Molly profess their love for each other.

Molly's ex-husband Spike is released from prison.

Joel fights Spike. 

Joel and Spike get married...whoops! 

Spike gets shot in the head. (Really!) 

Joel and Molly get married. 

No happily ever after: Joel and Mike get divorced.

Money problems. 

Molly's addicted to pills. 

But the movie ends with Joel and Molly deciding to give their relationship one more try. 

Whew!  

Every trope in romantic comedies gets pounded on with merciless abandon. 

A sex scene between Joel and Molly finds them madly pawing at each other as they stumble into furniture with lots of broken vases before they fall into the bedroom. One fade to black later, we follow a trail of clothing on the floor to the bed where Joel and Molly lay... still fully dressed. 

Molly's parents are white supremacists. Well, that's new. 

They Came Together is a veritable parade of "hey, it's that person who was in that thing".  Besides Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler, other stars include Cobie Smulders, Christopher Meloni, Max Greenfield, Bill Hader, Ellie Kemper, Jason Mantzoukas, Ed Helms, Jack McBrayer and Kenan Thompson.  

Right in the middle of the movie, we get a music video with Norah Jones  with  Adam Scott  and John Stamosas recording studio engineers.  

There are lots of parodies of romantic comedies that can be found on Tik Tok and You Tube which is about the length a parody of the form can sustain itself.  Stretched out over the course of a whole movie, the premise of a romantic comedy satire becomes stretched a bit too thin. 

Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd have a fairly decent chemistry which sustains the film and they're back up by a murderer's row of modern comedic talent. 

They Came Together is not all that good of a movie but it is an interesting curiosity with more than a few good laughs along the way.