Peter Bradshaw 

They Came Together review – beautifully observed comedy

This carefully observed, toe–curling spoof romance looks eerily like the movies it's sending up, writes Peter Bradshaw
  
  

They Came Together
Lovers … Paul Rudd, Amy Poehler and New York star in They Came Together. Photograph: JoJo Whilden Photograph: JoJo Whilden/PR

David Wain's funny and well observed spoof romcom maintains its observational rigour from first to last, looking eerily just like just the kind of film it's sending up – same production values, same locations, same cast, same everything. The idea is that Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler are Joel and Molly, a couple having dinner with another couple explaining how they met, and how it was just like a romantic comedy, the kind in which New York is a character in the movie!

Their troubled relationship is shown in flashback, along with all the standard-issue quirky best friends, siblings, ex-lovers. (Actors Randall Park and Ellie Kemper appear here in the same archetypal roles that they play for real in the grim comedy Sex Tape: corporate drone and female friend.) The showcased song by Norah Jones – we see black-and-white footage of Rudd and Poehler supposedly visiting the recording studio and hanging out with the artist, the producer and visiting celebrities – is a toe-curling masterpiece of romcom self-love.

 

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