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"How to Be Single" is an incredibly desperate movie.
Desperate to be funny. Desperate to be heartfelt. Desperate to have something to say.
It fails on all counts.
Adapted from former "Sex and the City" writer Liz Tuccillo's debut novel, the movie follows four women as they navigate single life in New York. Alice (Dakota Johnson) takes a break from her longtime boyfriend, Josh (Nicolas Braun), who is genuinely in love with her. On the advice of her new bestie, Robin (Rebel Wilson) — a cartoonish drunk who can't keep track of all the men she has sex with — Alice quickly jumps in bed with a hunky bar owner, Tom (Anders Holm). He's a player who secretly has eyes for straitlaced romantic Lucy (Alison Brie).
Alice moves in with her doctor sister, Meg (Leslie Mann), an obstetrician who insists she doesn't like babies — right up until the moment she decides to be artificially inseminated and have one. And once she's pregnant, she meets a younger man, Ken (Jake Lacy), who falls in love with her. Only she doesn't believe him.
Oh, and when Alice isn't trying to get back together with Josh, she's falling for David (Damon Wayans Jr.), a widower with a young daughter.
Hold tight to your armrests or you might get whiplash as this movie careens from Wilson being gross, loud and inappropriate to Wayans getting teary-eyed as he tells his young daughter about his late wife.
You know what you've gotten into almost immediately when the movie tries to draw laughs out of an underwear-clad Tom in a state of arousal and Robin blundering about, unable to find the guy she just slept with.
Wilson provides most of the comic relief, but the act wears thin quickly. She seems like something out of a completely different movie than this attempt to tout empowered women.
And that message is ridiculously at odds with the female characters in "How to Be Single," who spend most of their time reacting to the men in their lives.
This one is a swing and a miss.
Twitter: @ScottDPierce —
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'How to Be Single'
A crude attempt at comedy that tries and fails to promote female empowerment.
Where • Theaters everywhere.
When • Opens Friday, Feb. 12.
Rating • R for language, sexual content, brief nudity and substance use.
Running time • 110 minutes.