Movie Breakdown: I Do … Until I Don’t (Noah)

Pre-Screening Stance:

I almost liked Lake Bell’s directorial debut, In A World … but after a clever enough premise, it sort of fizzled in its want of tying up all the loose ends. Could be Bell has picked up a few things since then.

Post-Screening Ramble:

I Do … Until I Don’t feels like two films hastily stitched together. It isn’t that the film doesn’t have merits (or the two films, if you’re paying attention), it does, it’s just that 15-minutes before it slides to a polished halt, it just decides it is entirely different than what came before. Lake Bell – the writer and director of the film – plays Alice, a one-time artist who left her hopes and dreams on the side of the road to move to Vero Beach and co-manage her husband Noah’s (Ed Helms) family blind shop. It’s been a few years when the film starts and Alice and Noah aren’t exactly engaged in marital bliss. Neither are Alice’s sister, Fanny (Amber Heard) and her trustafarian husband Zander (Wyatt Cenac) or random Vero Beach socialites Cybil (Mary Steenburgen) and Harvey (Paul Reiser). On to the scene comes independent filmmaker Vivian (Dolly Wells), seeking broken relationships to use as fodder for her new avant garde documentary. For the rest of the film Bell focuses on the individual relationships (and their many many problems) as she pushes them closer and closer together. The actors are all seasoned comedians (outside of Amber Heard, who holds her own) and play off each other well, managing to be both indicative of the state of the modern relationship and warmly funny at the same time. Bell weaves in a nicely quirky, slightly mean-spirited atmosphere into the film particularly through Alice, a drifting almost loser, who blames any and all for her own life stagnation. It never pushes any boundaries but for two-thirds, it at least toots along, occasionally awkwardly, as the ending looms. And then the ending arrives and the film turns from low-key relationship comedy to the sort of feel good pap you’d find yourself half-watching at three in the morning on Cinemax. It’s an abrupt shift – music, character choices, even a warmer glow suffuses the surroundings – and it doesn’t work. You watch in cock-eyed confusion as Bell introduces brand new characters, drastically alters the intentions of others, and one by one ties up the loose ends, until all that’s left is a saccharine blob with a pretty little bow.

One Last Thought:

Ms. Bell, you’ve got one more shot.