Jean Nicole Dela Cruz
Warning: Spoiler Alert!!!
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Isn’t it Romantic is all about A woman who hates romantic comedies and finds herself stuck inside one. The main character, Natalie, portrayed by your all-time favorite plus-size brassy Aussie, Rebel Wilson, consistently up for everything that comes her way.
Directed by Todd Strauss-Schulson and screenwriters Erin Cardillo, Dana Fox, and Katir Silberman, Wilson was placed into a devious balancing act.
Almost all romantic-comedies that were presented in the movie—take “Pretty Woman” and “Notting Hill” as an example, experienced simultaneous mockeries and acknowledge many clichés of a rom-com genre. This movie shows how rom-com genre has its own formula and it makes fun of that formula in countless ways but the message was also pretty much delivered with the same exact method dipped with genuine excitement.
The movie mostly coasts on Natalie’s likability and the power of recognition: a particularly overused song, some hackneyed character traits, a well-worn narrative device or a tidy way of wrapping things up to achieve a happy ending, etc. But every once in a while, it has something to say about what’s problematic about these familiar film tropes. Why must the heroine always have a flamboyantly gay BFF, and why does he have no life of his own outside of hers? Why must she have a female office rival who hates her for no apparent reason, when they should be working together to topple the patriarchy?
Natalie is a young, single woman living in a dull and messy apartment in New York and working as an architect at a firm where no one appreciates her. That is, except for her work pal Josh (Wilson’s playful “Pitch Perfect” co-star Adam Devine), who clearly has a crush on her while dwelling in the friend zone.
One day on the way home from work, she gets mugged on a subway platform, bonks her head and wakes up in the hospital. Suddenly, the world around her has transformed. It’s a wonderland of flattering lighting and flirty doctors. Flowers and cupcakes are everywhere. The bustling NYC streets smell like lavender and the tinkling piano of Vanessa Carlton’s catchy “A Thousand Miles” follows her wherever she goes. Her surly neighbor from across the hall is now a stereotypically wisecracking gay man who loves makeover montages played by Brandon Scott. And in one of the sharpest insights, Natalie now lives in an impossibly spacious, chic apartment with insane amounts of closet space for her vast shoe collection—the kind of real estate very few people could realistically afford. In short—she’s in her alternate universe where rom-com scenarios definitely exist.
Imagine living in a rom-com movie where you actually despise. Natalie later on played her part on her supposed ‘love-story’ and plan how her love scenario ends. Putting a whirlwind romance in the picture with ultimately wealthy, hot, and mouth-smart real state developer (Liam Hemsworth), Natalie takes time to enjoy the fantasy she’s living in. A candle light dinner, a dramatic kiss-under-the-rain, and an awesome night but unfortunately, it was shortened and cut (where Natalie hates a lot because who wouldn’t want to miss that part in romantic movies) given that the movie where Natalie’s supposed to be is a PG-13.
On the other hand, Josh gets to enjoy his own love-life in the alternate universe (his own rom-com movie) with Prinyanka Chopra, who’s impossibly gorgeous, glamorous swimsuit model/yoga ambassador—the kind of passionate relationship that naturally opens Natalie’s eyes to what she’d been missing all along. She isn’t in love with Hemsworth’s character but she’s in love with Josh, her favorite pal who always fell on the friend-zone.
On Josh and Prianka’s ‘supposedly’ wedding, Natalie barged in and confessed her love, but the twist? She’s neither in love with the dreamy and almost perfect real state broker nor her ultimately pal. She is in love with herself.
Bottom-line, this movie doesn’t talk about who you choose to give your love with—it is about how you should love yourself first before giving that love to someone else.
Rest assured, this movie will make your face hurt and numb from smiling so hard and you can actually get a diabetes for the sugary sweetness of different scenes.
Young ECHO 
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