BEFORE: It's freaking cold in NYC today - we've managed to avoid the worst of the winter weather until now, we've just had a bunch of rain this season. Well, no more, we're finally getting one of those arctic blasts that have been menacing the Midwest. We had snow two days ago, but it was just a dusting, after nearly a year without any snow here. We still have to fight climate change, I know, but there's a side-benefit to it once in a while - I know that's not right. Well, it's a good day today to sit inside, watch movies, catch up on "Law & Order", maybe make some cocoa or play yahtzee.
Gillian Jacobs carries over from "Ibiza: Love Drunk".
THE PLOT: Sasha and Paige's co-dependent friendship is tested as Paige gets together with a guy for the first time.
AFTER: OK, now we're getting somewhere with the whole "relationships are complex" thing. This film is about two female best friends, one straight and one gay, and the way their relationship changes when they start to have serious (and not-so-serious) relationships with other people. This is tough for everybody, perhaps, juggling both kinds of "ships", friend- and relation- and resolving the inevitable conflicts that pop up in both cases or the combination of them. It's tough to say if the title refers to the two friends, Sasha and Paige, as a euphemism for people with a strong bond who are NOT romantically involved, or for the relationships that they're both looking for. I guess it doesn't matter. We all need life partners, or at least we all think that we do, who wants to go through this maddening world by themselves?
But we're raised to think that we can have it all - successful career, solid relationship, and at least one strong bonded friendship. What if we can have it all, just not all at the same time? That might be true for many people. Plus, the more you're juggling, the greater the chance that there are going to be conflicts, especially if you invite your significant other over to watch "America's Next Top Model" with your bestie, and that was supposed to be your special time together. Paige eventually learns over the course of this film that she's got an obsessive need to be right about things, she has difficulty admitting that she makes mistakes. When her car hits a neighbor's car, she hides the fact that she was texting and doubles down on the fact that the neighbor's car was sort of blocking her driveway. So she's willing to lie and rewrite history rather than admit she was in the wrong. And this is just one of many examples, she thinks she knows what's best for other people and even when she commits a personal foul, like trying too hard to improve someone else's life, she can't admit it. But on the verge of turning 30, she's got to improve herself before she can be a good partner for another person.
Sasha, on the other side of the equation, is a struggling musician who's working as a receptionist, only she hates the job, hates being called a receptionist, and then manages to self-sabotage while working by forgetting to mail out important packages. We see Sasha have a string of bad dates and failed relationships, which unfortunately reinforces the stereotype that lesbians are incapable of having long-term relationships. Maybe it just appears that way, perhaps the stats will show that they have the same number of bad relationships as straight people, I don't know because nobody's really keeping records of this. Perhaps they tend to bail as soon as things start to fail, and there's less pressure from society to fix things and make them work out. Perhaps years of keeping these sort of relationships quiet has had an effect, it's tough to say. But they do happen, and there's probably an equal chance of them lasting long-term. Still, Paige secretly questions Sasha's partner choices, because she tends to choose only immature girls who have moved back in with their parents and are thinking of applying to art school.
This is all set in some very gay-friendly community, I think it's Minneapolis, it's tough to say - and back in the year 2014, which was clearly a different time. Since then the youngs have come up with a number of potential solutions to relationship problems, like thrupples and open relationships and polyamorous situations, but something tells me those probably make peoples lives more complicated, not less. To each his own, I guess. But mostly this is a peek inside the lesbian community, the unwritten rules about not dating your friend's ex or when to go public with the fact that you ARE dating your friend's ex, because there are only so many lesbians in Minneapolis, after all. And since there's a pride parade every year, they all do know each other.
The running joke here is that when Sasha and Paige are driving their cars and encounter each other, they pretend to be two people who don't know each other, and they have a very public fight over a parking space or over who cut who off in traffic. Perhaps the screenwriters do this in real life (it's based on a real friendship between director Susanna Fogel and co-writer Joni Lefkowitz) but I just didn't find those scenes very funny. Still, there's a lot to enjoy here, and todays "Love Tip" is obviously that you've got to work on yourself as an individual before you can be a good partner for somebody else.
Gillian Jacobs seems to have cornered the market on playing unaware but completely neurotic women in their late twenties, while it turns out that the actress who played Sasha (the lesbian) and Tim (Paige's boyfriend) are married in real life.
Also starring Leighton Meester (last seen in "Going the Distance"), Gabourey Sidibe (last seen in "All In: The Fight for Democracy"), Beth Dover (last seen in "The Oath"), Abby Elliott (last seen in "Fun Size"), Kate McKinnon (last seen in "Yesterday"), Adam Brody (last seen in "Promising Young Woman"), Mark Feuerstein (last seen in "In Her Shoes"), Elizabeth Ho (last seen in "Save the Date"), Greer Grammer, Julie White (last seen in "A Very Murray Christmas"), Monte Markham (last seen in "Midway" (1976)), Anne O'Shea, Simone Bailly (last seen in "Good Luck Chuck"), AJ Meijer, John Forest (last seen in "Young Adult"), Zee James (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Matty Cardarople (last seen in "Free Guy").
RATING: 6 out of 10 rounds of beer pong (I never understood this game - who wants to drink a beer after a dirty ping pong ball that bounced on the ground has landed in it? You know you can just drink a clean beer without a game telling you that you HAVE to, right?)
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