'The Lovebirds' shine, the movie not so much | Netflix review

The Lovebirds follows a failing couple who find themselves on the run after witnessing a murder that ropes them into a criminal enterprise

Quick cut: When The Lovebirds gives Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani room to exercise their mastery in comedic timing and delivery it is enormously enjoyable, but the simplistic plot and uninspired writing leaves this crime comedy grounded.

★★★

There’s something about putting a couple at the center of a crime comedy that just works. Whether it’s an actual couple—like in Game Night or Date Night—or a mismatched buddy cop pairing—The Nice Guys or The Other Guys (at least they’re consistent). And perhaps the real reason they work is that the actors in the lead roles have the chemistry and comedic chops to make even the weakest material work. Such is the case with Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani in Netflix’s The Lovebirds, which reunites Nanjiani with his The Big Sick director Michael Showalter.

Rae and Nanjiani play Leilani and Jibran who at the start of the movie are madly in love. Skip four years and they find themselves arguing in their New Orleans apartment about whether or not they’d do well in The Amazing Race. However, like many seemingly silly arguments that long term couples have there is a lot of subtext in their words. Leilani finds Jibran too serious and unwilling to break out of his comfort zone, he finds her too self-involved and obsessed with image—we’ve seen this play out before.

Just as they call it quits while in the car to a friend’s dinner party, they run into a cyclist. And when I say run in, I mean they straight up hit him with their car. However, he doesn’t stick around clearly running from someone. That someone is only known as Mustache (Paul Spark) who commandeers the couple’s car—with them still in it—and chases down the suspect. And when I say chases down, I mean finds him, runs him over, reverses, and runs him over again.

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The couple is shocked and not completely sure what to do, but when a hipster couple hilariously mistakes them for the murderers they make a run for it. Convinced that the only way to prove their innocence is to find the real murderer, Jibran and Leilani set out on a cross-city manhunt looking for any clues. Along the way, they have run-ins with a torturous southern belle (Anna Camp), a frat boy possibly involved in the criminal enterprise that hired Mustache, and a secret sex society pulled straight out of Eyes Wide Shut.

The plot is essentially null and void with no moment that is particularly interesting or memorable. Instead, it’s solely meant to give Rae and Nanjiani moments to exercise their mastery in comedic timing and delivery. When confronted by Anna Camp’s woefully underused southern belle torturer, their bickering about whether or not to take bacon grease to the face or a horse kick to the chest is truly hilarious. In another scene, their interrogation of a frat boy—who Leilani calls “date rape”—shows off the leads’ chemistry. However, the high is often short-lived and stunted by Aaron Abrams and Brendan Gall‘s witless script.

There are moments when the movie tries to give some depth to the couple as they work through their differences in the midst of this crisis. And while it’s appreciated, it makes the already thin plot even more of a drag. Rae and Nanjiani do their best to lift the material from its subpar footing but are only marginally successful. Is The Lovebirds a complete disaster? No. It’s an entertaining 90 minutes. But after that everything about the movie simply flies away from your mind. Just watch the brilliant Game Night instead.

The Lovebirds is now streaming on Netflix.

More movies, less problems

Hey! I’m Karl. You can find me on Twitter here. I’m also a Tomatometer-approved critic.

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Karl Delossantos

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Hey, I'm Karl, founder and film critic at Smash Cut. I started Smash Cut in 2014 to share my love of movies and give a perspective I haven't yet seen represented. I'm also an editor at The New York Times, a Rotten Tomatoes-approved critic, and a member of the Online Film Critics Society.