A romantic comedy about the different dating adventures of young people in the big city loosely tied up together into one plot. No, I'm not talking about "Sex and The City", this is "How To Be Single". First things first, may I just say the minute I discovered that they had put Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson , Leslie Mann, Jake Lacy , Damon Wayans Jr. and Anders Holm all together in one comedy film, I thought "that's it!". They had the wining cast. What could possibly go wrong? Well, a few things did go wrong, but in the end it all came out okay.
"How To Be Single" is based on the novel by Liz Tuccillo of the same title. At the start, we see sweet and shy Alice (Dakota Johnson), telling her longtime boyfriend Josh (Nicholas Braun), that they need to temporarily separate so she could find herself. She moves to New York to be a paralegal and moves in with her sister, a gynecologist, who considers having a child as a single mother via sperm donor after not wanting any children of her own for a long time. Alice befriends wild co-worker Robin (Rebel Wilson) who enjoys partying and one-night stands. Robin introduces her to Tom (Anders Holm), a bartender who has willfully embraced the bachelor lifestyle and enjoys numerous casual hookups. However, Tom has a crush on Lucy (Alison Brie), who lives close to his bar and is looking for the perfect guy on every dating site possible, even employing the use of algorithms to find one.
Even though she is the most quiet of all the characters, the film centers around Alice, and we watch her mingle with all these bold, loud and comic characters around her; yet she thrives through as her timid self and doesn't necessarily drown in it all. Robin (Rebel Wilson) plays the fearless, carefree and promiscuous character who hides her riches until the end if the movie. Quite a predictable role for Rebel if you ask me. We are so used to her playing the bubbly, vibrant girl who just doesn't care, such that we almost see it as her real personality (which it actually is). Even when she starts out as shy, we just wait for the part where she breaks out. It is like she is just out here playing herself in these movies (except the promiscuous part, I presume), and we love it!
Alice’s sister, Meg (Leslie Mann), is fiercely independent and judging on her character, her whole storyline is very suiting. Then again, there is always the focused but slightly confused one in all these multi-storyline movies. However, it bothered me a little that Dakota and Leslie were casts as sisters when they are actually so far apart in age. But it is a detail that can be overlooked. Then there is Lucy, who I think the writers made the biggest mistake of not giving her a clear link with Alice except the fact that she is Tom's crush instead. They could have made the two (Alice and Lucy) friends, and it would have created a smoother flow in the storyline as well as create some juicy controversy.
With New York as the setting, the film takes us through fancy restaurants, sprawling apartments and stylish wardrobes. It brings a sense of the city life and really creates a magical mood, in true "Sex and the City" style. I also enjoy that the film had a spontaneous ending where everyone's story was allowed to unfold in its own unique way and the idea of "in love and happy"/"single and lonely" and vise versa was not forced onto any of the characters.
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