Sundance Film Festival movie review: 'Together Together'
(Image courtesy of Sundance Film Festival.)
The relationship comedy 'Together Together' (premiering at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival) has all the trappings of a traditional rom-com - except that it joyfully and confidently is most certainly not a romance.
In short: Single, 40-year-old app designer Matt (Ed Helms) forges an unlikely relationship with Anna (Patti Harrison) after he hires her as a gestational surrogate.
"Sometimes people just connect" is clearly the thesis of a film that flirts with the conventions of romantic comedy, while calling out all the trappings of the rom-com genre. The traditional rom-com starts with a meet-cute and ends with a kiss -- which itself implies the only relationships that are worth committing to film are romantic stories. 'Together' fills the massive void that allows for narratives about intimate relationships that just don't slip into romantic dalliances simply by default.
Taken as a whole, 'Together' is a refreshing departure from the typical rom-com formula. But the experience of sitting down and spending the hour and a half with these two characters is sometimes tedious and fragmented. "Together' is the kind of light comedy lacking any huge, over-the-top laughs - but consistently delivers a steady stream of nice little chuckles and smiles. The overall film feels like a string of awkward sketches, such as Matt worrying about Anna's sex life for way too long or wondering why single fathers are adored while single mothers are pitied. The dramatic comedy moves through various, fractal touchstones of pregnancy, allowing the mildly overbearing Matt to wedge himself into Anna's life.
Although the aloof Anna is initially put off by Matt's intrusive behavior, it is genuinely sweet to watch them slowly just start to click. In the hands of another hack producer, the film would have put Matt and Anna on a predictable crash course toward love and wedding bells - because the two are kind of perfect complementary and lonely people navigating the world. But in rejecting the predictable, 'Together' gets the opportunity to explore another type of love that can be just as deep and meaningful as romantic love: an intimate, unvarnished and sincere love between two friends. 'Together' low-key attacks social norms and expectations on multiple fronts: Anna's family disapproves of her previous pregnancy, her acquaintances just naturally assume she's happily married and Matt struggles to find parenting books written with single fathers in mind. And one last way 'Together' bucks expectations and norms - casting transgender actress Patti Harrison as the surrogate whose pregnancy defines the trajectory of the film and brings the two co-leads together.
Final verdict: 'Together' is a sweet embrace of platonic love - which frees the story up to explore a type of genuinely adorable love that rarely gets told in movies. This enjoyable little film gets degree-of-difficulty bonus points for flipping a genre on its head in a thoughtful and heartfelt rejection of storytelling norms.
Score: 4/5
'Together Together' screens at the 2021 Sundance Film Festival. This comedy is not yet rated and has a running time of 90 minutes.
Directed by Nikole Beckwith / Screenplay by Nikole Beckwith / Score by Alex Somers / Cinematography by Frank Barrera / Film Editing by Amber Bansak & Annette Davey / Production Design by Ashley Fenton / Starring Ed Helms, Patti Harrison, Tig Notaro, Julio Torres & Anna Konkle.
