All Together Now

I was not a fan of Wet Hot American Summer, to put it mildly. Yet I am a fan of just about everyone who was involved with it, and so I was willing to give the gang another chance with their latest film, They Came Together. Written by David Wain and Michael Showalter, the movie is both a romantic comedy and a sarcastic parody.

Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd star as a couple who tell their friends the story of how they met and fell in love. The setup allows for "How I Met Your Mother" style narrative commentary, meta humor, groaners, and thinkers, but most of the comedy comes from an almost Zucker brothers type of tongue-in-cheek ridiculousness. The movie doesn't have the "joke every 5 seconds" structure of say, Airplane!, but like that great comedy of the past, it never uses a cliche without commenting on it. And it uses all the cliches.

In just 90 minutes, the movie packs in an epic (and epicly talented) supporting cast: Cobie Smulders, Christopher Meloni, Max Greenfield, Bill Hader, Ellie Kemper, Ed Helms, Michael Ian Black, Jack McBrayer, Kenan Thompson, and Ken Marino all appear, as do Adam Scott and John Stamos in a bizarre but hilarious cameo. But it's really anchored by Poehler and Rudd, who do manage a credible romance even as they're mocking the formula every step of the way.

Ultimately, I was very entertained, and I'd recommend the movie to pretty much anybody... save perhaps fans of rom-coms who might not enjoy seeing a beloved genre distilled to its repetitive tropes. Then again, Galaxy Quest didn't make me like Star Trek any less. (Though to be clear, good as this movie might be, Galaxy Quest is in another league.) I give They Came Together an A-.