Man Up offers nothing new to romantic comedies. But there’s just something about the onscreen duo of Simon Pegg and Lake Bell that makes it work. Despite the understandable backlash against the unrealistically optimistic portrayal of romance, there’s a reason why the rom-com formula is a staple and a largely successful one at that. The film, thankfully, doesn’t attempt to subvert rom-com norms with an overabundance of “edginess,” but it does take a few digs at overused tropes. Screenwriter Tess Morris at least makes a concerted effort to set her characters, if not her story arc, apart from genre clichés.
This manifests itself most in Nancy (Bell), a heavily sarcastic 34-year-old whose older sister (Sharon Horgan) is pushing her to put more effort into finding The One—or even settling for someone passable. The film opens with Nancy attempting to do just that at a Hawaiian-themed engagement party. But several swigs of wine aren’t enough to muster the courage to leave her hotel room and join in, so she orders room service and watches Silence of the Lambs instead. She recognizes that she’s pathetically single, but has no real interest in jumping through all those painfully awkward dating hoops. Her attempts are half-hearted at best. She has an arsenal of encouraging mantras (Take more chances, put yourself out there, be more deviant, engage with life), but she mostly uses them to force herself to begrudgingly do uncomfortable things. In short, she’s just as skeptical about starry-eyed romanticism as those who roll their eyes at rom-coms.
Nancy then has a run-in with the overly optimistic and bubbly Jessica (Ophelia Lovibond) on a train on the way to her parent’s 40th anniversary party. Jessica suggests Nancy read a best-selling self-help book (the very one she is using to recognize her blind date à la You’ve Got Mail) to get her life and attitude in order. After Nancy insults her and settles in for an hour-long angry-nap, she wakes up to the train reaching Waterloo Station, the annoying girl gone and the self-help book lying on the table; a truly unwanted gift if ever there was one. But what Jessica’s actually given Nancy is the opportunity to assume her identity and go on a blind date with 40-year-old divorcee, Jack (Pegg). As you can imagine—especially after they quote Silence of the Lambs together—Nancy has found The One. It’s just a matter of revealing the truth.
Man Up could only be called novel in the context of director Ben Palmer’s body of work. Certainly, the man responsible for The Inbetweeners Movie wouldn’t then jump straight into a shockingly conventional rom-com. But the film is a solid genre offering and one that doesn’t hinge its leads’ happiness on the discovery of one major lie. That subplot is dealt with fairly speedily instead of being left for an eventual, predictable and sappy reveal. The bulk of the latter half, then, sees Jack grapple with his attraction to a woman who lied so willingly about her identity. But that’s all handled a bit indirectly. The film is too immediately concerned with set pieces involving Sean (Rory Kinnear), who has harbored a disturbing infatuation with Nancy since high school, and Hilary (Olivia Williams), Jack’s ex-wife. Kinnear plays an important role in the finale, but his no-boundaries character is funny only in the sense that you’re watching Rory Kinnear of all people strip naked in a bathroom.
The finale is, unfortunately yet predictably, the weakest part of Man Up. Yes, it does all boil down to awkward speeches and declarations of love in front of random people, but up to that point the film was a pleasant deviation from a typical rom-com. Pegg, at times, comes across a little stiff in his role, but Lake Bell is the undisputed focal point of the film and its saving grace. After her success writing, directing and starring in In a World and giving an impressive performance here, hopefully she’ll have many opportunities to lead projects in future.