Mr. Right.

by CB

Fecal jocularity.

We all searched for our Mr. or Mrs. Right. Despite the fact that there were billions of people on the planet before the contagion, there were very few people that were actually compatible. You had to take a lot of things into consideration, such as who you found attractive, if they had your sense of humour, you shared similar interests, political viewpoints, cleanliness, lifestyles… the list goes on. When you finally found that person where everything clicked, you had to hang on and never let go. So even if your husband/wife, boyfriend/girlfriend, partner, friend, teammate, etc, turns out to be a serial killer, at least hear them out before running for your life.

Mr. Right stars two of the most talented actors of the pre-apocalypse. Anna Kendrick was a favourite of mine from the early days when she played Scott Pilgrim’s older sister, and Sam Rockwell won my heart over in one of my favourite films, The Way Way Back. So despite the fact that I had never heard of this movie, I needed a romantic comedy full laughs, romance and those two beautiful human beings just being their charismatic selves. And boy, does Mr. Right not deliver.

Any film that can make Sam Rockwell seem boring is clearly doing something wrong. In the film, he plays a hitman who just happens to be turning his life around, when he runs into a beautiful girl named Martha at the convenience store, played by Ms. Kendrick. Martha has recently broken up with her boyfriend when he not only cheated on her, but tried to make it better by inviting her to join in on the action. The set up is filled with potential, but thanks to some poor direction and worse writing, I found myself longing for the two stars to be in any movie but this.

The most glaring problem is that these characters are neither charming nor realistic. I couldn’t buy the fact that Mr. Right was supposed to be this perfect man, when his sense of humour was calling other people “poopy heads”. That was just one of many fecal related jokes in the movie, none of which landed. I also couldn’t buy that Martha would fall so deeply in love with Mr. Right in one day that she could overlook the fact that he kills people for a living. Her character progression throughout the movie is nonsensical. One minute she is completely horrified that this man she just met plays with knives for fun, the next minute she is inviting him to throw them at her. If having multiple personalities was the character choice they were going for, they really didn’t make that clear enough. Mr. Right himself is likeable enough, in part due to Rockwell’s game performance (he really did try), but also because he clearly does feel bad for his actions. His character is a nice guy, albeit one with a terrible sense of humour, but we don’t get anything else out of him. In other words, there is a serious lack of depth. He is a nice killer, something that we have seen countless times before, and done much better than this.

The plot for the film doesn’t help the characters either. The movie starts out with plenty of avenues to explore, but ends up going down the most trodden path. It doesn’t stray from the tried and true formula of the romantic comedy, nor the hitman love story that we have seen before. Even Mr. and Mrs. Smith explored the dynamic between people keeping secrets from each other better than this movie. There are no repercussions for the actions of any characters. That leaves us with no drama. So if there is no drama, bland characters with unclear motivations and unbelievable arcs, are then what are we left with. The aforementioned humour certainly doesn’t help, as it is all directed at the most base level audience. There is nothing intelligent about any of the jokes. The visual storytelling and humour don’t add anything to the package either. The direction for the film feels oddly out of place. More than this even being a romantic comedy, it is an action movie. Only the action scenes feel tired, as if the director was too lazy to move the camera. For all of the shooting, stabbing and dancing that this film features, it doesn’t feel visceral in the least, and yet it feels the need to fill the screen with blood.

So does the film succeed at anything? Both Kendrick and Rockwell commit to their performances, but you can tell at times that they know that their dialogue is pretty amateurish. I felt especially bad for Kendrick in the last 15 minutes, as her character continues to devolve into unbelievable territory. There really aren’t any redeeming qualities. And to think that there was a time after that I thought Max Landis was going to be Hollywood’s next iconic screenwriter. Oh how I was mistaken.

For a cast that was so right, this movie just feels so wrong.

1.5 stars out of 5.

CB