How to Be Single (2016)

It's risky to title a movie like a self-help book, because the audience may actually expect to learn something by watching the story unfold. The bad news is, if you're seriously looking for a guide on how to be a single lady, you'd gain more by listening to Beyonce.

'How to be Single' centres around Alice, played by Dakota Johnson ('Fifty Shades of Grey'), and her transition into post-breakup life in New York City. Once she arrives at her new job she becomes fast friends with Rebel Wilson ('Pitch Perfect'), a guru on the single way of life. This involves a lot of partying, drinking, and waking up in random people's bedrooms, all to a soundtrack of Izzy Azalea and Taylor Swift. You get the picture.

Romcom staple Leslie Mann plays Alice's older and supposedly wiser sister. This character goes from hating children to booking herself a sperm-donor online, in the space of about a week. Another subplot, which has very little to do with the main story, involves Alison Brie ('Community') who is also looking for love in the Big Apple. Instead of the partying/one-night-stand formula, she devises an online dating algorithm to find the perfect man, with some pretty bad results.

The central message of the plot is confusing, and changes throughout the film. The protagonists develop relationships with around fifteen men between them, which becomes quite hard to keep track of, and also leaves us wondering whether any of the women are ever truly single for more than a day at a time.

The trailer for this movie does a good job of making it look like a decent enough comedy. Rebel Wilson has to be given credit for some of her one-liners and stunts, but the big problem is that the few jokes from the advert are by far the best in the whole script. The rest of the time, there's a truckload of weak, over sexualised jokes that just don't serve their purpose. In other words, if the trailer doesn't make you laugh, the full 2 hour feature may just make you cry. If you do end up seeing this, a good way to make yourself laugh is to imagine you're watching one of those 'bad lip reading' videos. The dialogue in many of the scenes is quite literally on that same level of obscurity.

At this time of year, cinemas are chock-full of Oscar nominated films that work hard to deliver you quality entertainment. Amongst them, this sticks out like a sore thumb. I did my best to enjoy this movie, because it does try to be funny. But like your uncle who tries to stay hip and relevant by using Facebook, the results are cringeworthy and frankly, a little bit creepy.