It’s one of the more popular pieces of self-help advice, and
something that pops up fairly frequently in regards to finding employment. The
idea on its own is rather interesting: By pretending that you have a higher
level of confidence that you actually have, over time, it stops being pretend
and it’s just you being confident. It’s good advice for all intents and
purposes… but just how much do you have to fake?
This is a question I myself have brought up in my past
experiences in the job market, worrying that people would end up hiring me
because I was presenting a candidate that isn’t myself. Well, this latest
effort from director Peter Segal, who also helmed two of the better Sandler
comedies with Anger Management and 50 First Dates, looks at the logical extreme
of that notion… kind of.
That’s at least what the film initially presents, both with
its main premise and its trailer that features that one song that seemed to be in every 90’s film set in New York.
It’s the story of Maya, an older woman trying to find a better job and who gets
given a doctored resume and background to get her foot in the door. This
premise already sets off some alarm bells, since the trope of characters keeping
secrets from each other that get abruptly revealed just before the third act is
one of the more common ones. It’s also remarkably annoying, as it usually
devolves into audiences just waiting around for the lie to be revealed because
it always happens. This isn’t an
exception to that, unfortunately, and as much as Jenny from the block isn’t
nearly as bad as she was last time we checked in on her, she and the rest of
the admittedly decent cast can’t get past that problem.
Thankfully, the problem itself is dampened a bit by how the
lie itself is examined, both its requirement to move the story forward and as a
contributor to relationships. The liar revealed is a commonly-used trope,
particularly in romantic comedies, because it’s something of a common fear
within relationships: What the other person is keeping from them. While this
factors into Maya’s actual romantic relationship with Trey, played by Rocky Jr.
from Creed II, it also gets brought into focus alongside her connections with
her co-workers, her friends and her… family. It’s rare that I feel like I need
to put a spoiler tag on a single word, but as stated above, this is “kind of”
about lies and how they affect relationships.
And that’s probably the biggest problem with this whole
thing: It’s "kind of" about a lot of things, none of which are given as much
breathing room as they need to truly flourish. While the writing can be
downright slick in how it sets up certain plot points, the attempts to balance
all the different plot threads leaves this film feeling quite messy. Maya
managing the lie that got her the job, the highly contrived contest between her
and another worker, her fears regarding family, subplots about ancillary
characters, commenting on the use of business jargon in place of intelligible
sentences, sexism in the workplace; it’s all too soupy to really have the
effect it desires, resulting in an unfortunately scattershot production.
No comments:
Post a Comment