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Canberra Today 25°/29° | Friday, March 29, 2024 | Digital Edition | Crossword & Sudoku

Review / ‘How To Be Single’ (M) *

DIRECTOR Christian Ditter and lead writers Abby Kohn and Marc Silverstein offer us a view of the New York scene for early-20s boys and girls – one long party fuelled by booze, sex and refusal (or inability) to commit.

Rom-com chick-flicks preach this message through a traditional dramatic structure – boy and girl meet, get it on, party like crazy, separate for whatever trivial reason, realise that what they gave away beats what they’ve now got, hugs, kisses, bedroom romps, partying, all good except for the guy who’s been rejected, closing credits.

“HTBS” makes it clear early on that it’s the girl’s prerogative to wake with a hangover in the apartment of a man whose name she doesn’t remember and she’ll never see again.

Indeed, why should it not be thus in a gender-equality era. But “HTBS” seems less to want to make useful observations about wild-oats-sowing women than to generate laughter when they don’t ask the right questions or, when so asked, don’t give rational answers. The film’s three young women, whose futures the film puts at risk, behave with scant concern for self-preservation. Life’s about upping the fun intake and devil take the consequences.

The film’s best thing is without doubt Rebel Wilson as Robin who knows better than any of the others how to play the fun game and bend men to her satisfaction in every department. The writers could have given her more substantial material without lessening the role’s comic values but, regrettably, didn’t.

At Hoyts, Dendy, Palace Electric

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Dougal Macdonald

Dougal Macdonald

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