| A romantic comedy and a hit-man murder-fest. Comedy, sure, and with Anna Kendrick and Sam Rockwell, you’ve got the romance, chemistry, and quirky comedy to boot. If anybody can sell this violent, insane, romantic Mr. Right hero, it’s Sam Rockwell. He is fantastic. It’s just that the plot is so far-fetched and complete nonsense, that it’s just too hard to find him or this story interesting. | | 2015
Directed by: Paco Cabezas
Screenplay by: Max Landis
Starring: Anna Kendrick, Sam Rockwell
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Kendrick starts the movie off with insight into a fascinating, but bizarre, character named Martha. As a child, Martha does not dream of being a doctor or a lawyer, but a Tyrannosaurus Rex. Cut to present time, and Martha is down-on-her-luck after catching her boyfriend cheating on her and she's so scatter-brained that she’s more clueless about life than she was before.
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| Images courtesy of VVS Films. |
The romantic comedy element of the movie was well done. They don’t know each other at all, but they still think there’s something perfect about the other person. People who are a bit more sane, would have moved on in seconds, but these two aren’t sane. Ridiculous scenes of them falling in love while wearing identical shirts and valentine-shaped glasses follow, which are somewhat funny. Scenes like that sell the rom-com satire that they are presumably going for.
But the movie is actually funny when it’s being literal. When they are on their first official date, Francis tells Martha that he just had to step out into the parking lot to kill a guy. He really did, but of course she thinks he was just joking. Not much later, Martha finds out that he really does kill people. She’s upset and he attempts to comfort her. “Are you upset about what I did to that guy? Because how I feel about that guy has nothing to do with how I feel about you.” And then in a fairly non-comedic sequence, Martha just accepts him.
Now the movie moves into full-on killing people who need to be killed. There are a lot of bad guys, but seeing as every character in one way or another is a bad guy, that really just boils down to “a lot of guys.” At which point, it should be pretty clear, that the movie is just riding on the premise, a joke which they have since moved on from, and a whole lot of uninteresting nonsense. And this last part is half the movie.
The funny, quirky and romantic chemistry which Anna Kendrick and Sam Rockwell are able to open the movie with, can only sustain it for so long. Eventually it has to say something, or have an actual plot, but Mr. Right doesn’t. It’s just a collection of somewhat entertaining but absurd and inane scenes.
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