Swingers - Doug Liman
This average film follows Mike, Jon Favreau (Spider-Man: Homecoming, Solo: A Star Wars Story), as he tries to get over a breakup. The entire problem with the film is that we do not see the start of the story. We need to see the breakup.
Without seeing the breakup, this is an ordinary world for Mike. We are just watching his day-to-day. For this to be the meat of the story, we need to see what life was like before and why he is striving to find another Michelle.
The only other option is that deciding to go for a new girlfriend rather than pining over the old one has to be a huge moment and distinct from everything that came before.
This moment never happens. All his friends are trying to get him to move on when he is not ready to.
This leads to the most awkward of moments over and over again. These are supposed to be funny, but the joke is at the expense of Mike.
So if we laugh at the jokes, then we are against him. If we don’t, the comedy isn’t funny.
So the film just doesn’t work on the comedic level either. From the awkward scotch order when they arrive in Vegas with $300 and only $100 to bet.
Betting the $100 immediately because they sit at a table that has a $100 minimum. This isn’t a mistake by the characters.
They are just idiots because they don’t want to look bad.
Mike keeps judging all the women that they meet. They all show him up by being smarter than he thought or whatever it was he was judging them on. He just ends up looking like a jerk.
The jokes are cringeworthy. Not my cup of tea, but if you are into that, this may be the film for you.
There is a recurring joke where five of the friends are going out to parties, and they are all driving bumper to bumper to get there. I don’t get it.
The first girl Mike likes, he leaves heaps of messages one after the other, and then at the seventh message, he breaks up with her. She picks up and says, “Never call again”.
The only upside was the film’s climax, where Mike has Michelle on the phone and receives a call from Lorraine, his new love interest.
This scene is really well done and forces Mike to choose. All in all, there a a lot of not-so-funny scenes as we follow Mike mopping around and just being a bit of a dick until he is forced to choose between the old girlfriend and the new. Skip would be my recommendation.
