
Flicks, Steve Newall
Amid generic rom-com fare - which, for the record, I’m not necessarily opposed to - lies the odd interesting angle. The Five-Year Engagement was pitched as a comedy about the journey between proposal and wedding (and coincidentally featured How to Be Single’s Dakota Johnson and Alison Brie billed 12th and 4th in the cast respectively); David Wain’s They Came Together sent up the genre hilariously; and Trainwreck saw Amy Schumer offer a more relevant, if hardly unconventional, rom-com. On paper, and as the title declares, How to be Single sets out to do something different, too, but unfortunately falls victim to the same formulaic clichés you’d think it would avoid.
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