by Vi Burgess and Haley Mitchell, editor-in-chief and managing editor
“In fact, if you hadn’t have pretended to be my date today, my day would’ve been utterly rubbish.”
Any movie starring Simon Pegg is usually synonymous with either uppercuts of belly-laughter-inducing wit or well-shot action sequences, and settling for the former, BBC has spun an inspiring tale of romance, second chances and mistaken identity.
The film follows Nancy Patterson’s (Lake Bell) depressing love life–she’s thirty-four, constantly being reminded by family and friends that she’s not getting any older, and she’s terrified of looking for Mr. Right. When it seems Mr. Right does come along, he’s meeting her under a train station clock, complimenting her on what a good idea it was that they recognize each other by carrying the same lame self-help book (that she got from a girl on the train) when they meet for their blind date. Yeah. Mr. Right has the wrong girl, but charmed by his lack of inhibition and a Silence of the Lambs quotation, she plays along.
Their 14-hour date starts out in the pretty typical rom-com way; after their meet-cute, they wander down London for some alcohol (keep track of this) and share the normal awkward first-date conversation that kind of kills everyone inside a little bit. After that, they go to a cantina and drink more beer and shots (that’s time number two), followed by a bowling alley where they knock back about three glasses of beer each (that’s time number three), and back to the cantina for more shots (time number four) and eventually end up at a party…where they drink wine (that’s time number five).
Moving on from the fact that they’ve got to have a blood alcohol level of like, 0.30 at the very least and they’re somehow still sober enough to give cute speeches, the movie is unexpectedly galvanizing. Sure, it’s still got the grand, cheesy slow-motion-80’s-music-running-through-the-street, but it’s also filled with some hard-hitting conversations about letting go, moving on and learning to be the person that you once were before somebody broke your heart. Everything in the film is about finding the right kind of wrong, and not everybody is going to magically find that at 24 and have their life in perfect order.
Snuck in between the rough conversations in a bathroom stall are these funny little quips that really chronicle a life together, from awkward conversation to cute flirting to a bad marriage to the disastrous aftermath of a separation. They may be about some of the biggest things any of us will ever do, but you don’t realize it until the movie’s over. Unlike the spate of slapstick comedies that feature at the movie theater, these jokes actually have meaning.
Man Up is a rare rom-com masterpiece that reminds all of us that there’s always some kind of light at the end of the tunnel–but only if we can face our fears and go seek it out.
