Larry Oliver Film Reviews

  Together Together , written and directed by Nikole Beckwith ( Stockholm, Pennsylvania ), has the sweetness and warmth of the best romantic comedies whilst flipping the conventions of the genre. It charts the relationship between forty-five-year-old San Francisco-based app developer, Matt (Ed Helms) and his twenty-six-year-old gestational surrogate, Anna (Patti Harrison). As far as I can tell, Matt doesn’t work but instead devotes his days to impending fatherhood, firstly by selecting the surrogate then by spending as much time with her as their boundaries will allow, even objecting to her one-night stand, Jacob (Timm Sharp) who flips him the ‘V’ sign. ‘His penis has been near to my baby,’ Matt protests as he stops by Anna’s apartment to present her at the second attempt a pair of clogs to protect her feet, one of a few inappropriate ideas that die on the vine. ‘You do know that your baby isn’t in my vagina,’ responds Anna, who has cashed her $15,000 cheque for the purpose of goi...

After her 2013 critically successful debut, In A World… writer-director-star Lake Bell has found a more conventional use for three full stops in the relationship comedy, I Do … Until I Don’t . Essentially, it is several sit-com episodes strung together for a 106 minute feature film. Some of the characters could use a little more rounding and there is (spoiler alert) screenwriter 101 structure for an upbeat movie – begin with a funeral and end with a birth. Personally, I have a lot of time for screenwriting 101; usually, I see screenwriting 911. (‘Hello, my inter-racial buddy comedy isn’t working. What do you recommend? What do you mean, give up?’) I admire Bell for putting her character, Alice, in uncomfortable situations. Like having sex in a toilet cubicle where she noticed that the previous user – Alice’s husband, Noah (Ed Helms in a rare foray into a film that grossed under $1 million, if you discount The Clapper ) - hasn’t flushed. Then there’s the movie-stopping ‘ball cupping’ s...