The Lovebirds (2020)

I remember before the Coronavirus Pandemic shut everything down like movie theaters, there were some amazing looking and funny trailers that were playing on the big screen. As we know, there were countless films that fell victim to the Coronavirus and were forced to find new homes online and one of those films is The Lovebirds which was released this past Friday on Netflix. The film stars Kumail Nanjiani (Life As We Know It) as Jibran and Issa Rae (BoJack Horseman) as Leilani, a couple who is having a little bit of a rough patch. All of that is put to the test when they get carjacked and witness a murder and then try to solve it because now they have to avoid being caught by the killer before it's too late as they run around New Orleans. The film also stars Paul Sparks (Thoroughbreds) as Moustache, Anna Camp (The Most Hated Woman In America) as Edie, Nicholas X. Parsons (Power Of The Air) as Bicycle,  Kyle Bornheimer (Onward) as Brett, Barry Rothbart (The Wolf Of Wall Street) as Mr. Hipster,  Catherine Cohen (The Special Without Brett Davis) as Mrs. Hipster, Andrene Ward-Hammond (The Fright Night Files) as Detective Martin, Mahdi Cocci (Watchmen) as Keith,  Betsy Borrego (Cloak & Dagger) as Reya, and the film was directed by the amazing Michael Showalter (Wet Hot American Summer).

I know the film has been getting a lot of flack from various critics that I have seen, but to be honest, it's really not that bad of a film. The question going into it was obviously whether the film was as funny as the trailer suggested and that is what might be the problem for most people because it definitely was not. It had some moments sprinkled throughout the film, but when you actually see all of the scenes from the trailer actually play out, you'll notice it's not as funny as the trailer made them out to be. Now the film like I said was not terrible at all as it had it's moments where it kept me entertained for the whole duration of the film. I thought Kumail and Issa made a great team in the film, but the whole film rested on their shoulders and not all of their jokes were funny all the time. A lot of the jokes in the film were those that have been used over and over again like how many times have we seen the interrogation room scene where they are not in deep trouble, but they just keep spilling their guts. I'm not saying originality was the problem, but it was the overuse of the typical comedy themes in the writing which was the overall problem and it's too bad because I am a huge fan of Michael Showalter. The film has a 67% on Rotten Tomatoes, a 6 out of 10 on IMDB which sounds about right because it's a middle of the road kind of film. That is why I am going to give the film an B- for a final grade.