To say I was excited to see a comedy involving Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani is an understatement. Two of the funniest, charming people on the planet matching wits and wordplay? Perfect, those two could carry any movie vehicle to a rollicking fun success. Or so I thought, thanks to The Lovebirds.
After a wonderful first connection, Leilani (Issa Rae) and Jibran (Kumail Nanjiani) settle into a life together, eventually hitting a rut a few years later. While going to a friend’s dinner party, the couple decide to call it quits…just in time for a “police officer” (Paul Sparks) to run down a cyclist in their car. Naturally freaked out, the pair leave the crime scene, which means they can’t go to the police to prove their innocence. They have to prove it themselves by finding the “police officer.”
The Lovebirds’s script lets everyone down here. It gets probably the harshest term I can present: it’s safe. I can deal with a bad comedy script, cause at least they tried to do something and it didn’t work. This script feels like it stops every time the movie’s about to go into some potentially iffy territory, opting instead to move to the next scene. Being leads of color, there’s a real chance to do some scathing indictments of the criminal justice system, or a send up of normal hinjinks laden comedies like this, where the leads get the benefit of the doubt because of their race. We have the hijinks for sure, but with no real bite, their potency is severely limited on the audience. Immediately recapping what I saw I barely remembered anything besides the few chuckles I had, a damning testament to a script that in trying to appeal to everyone appeals to no one large chunks of the time.
That the movie is watchable at all is a testament to Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae, two of Hollywood’s biggest talents today. I assumed they took the lame material written for them and improved it/put their personality into it to make it at least fun. A frazzled about to break up couple can easily sway into cruel territory, but Nanjiani and Rae keep the conversations more picky, playing up the “little things” arguments like if the couple would be good on Amazing Race. Their best moments are when the pair are whispering things to each other; that’s where you see the little bite the movie actually has. The audacious scenes aren’t even that funny, until Issa Rae starts dancing inappropriately, or Kumail Nanjiani throws out an insane threat in an interrogation.
My only hope is that the lovebirds gave Kumail Nanjiani and Issa Rae a bunch of money and a friendship. That way, they can write a new version of The Lovebirds, making the story more crisp and interesting than the safe drivel they were given here. Don’t believe me? Watch any of Nanjiani’s standup or Rae’s show Insecure, two shows that pop with importance and all sorts of humor that The Lovebirds dreams of having.