Hi, can I please be friends with both of you? I’m kind of cool and not desperate, I swear. Image via Vanity Fair

I can’t do it. I just…I can’t do it. I can’t…review…They Came Together.

Don’t worry, I haven’t reached my breaking point. I have just found a film that has rendered itself unreviewable. That is not to say that They Came Together is bad or difficult to understand; it is just to say that is so self-aware that at times it won’t feel like you are watching a movie, but rather two idiots with too much imagination pitching their idea for a romantic comedy. And that is not a diss at all.

They Came Together starts with a double date where the story of Joel (Paul Rudd) and Molly’s (Amy Poehler) relationship goes on for a very long time, and turns out to be just like “a corny romantic comedy.” Thus, they proceed to tell the story of the worst romantic comedy possible. They Came Together tries to be bad, and that is what makes it so good.

For that reason, I feel like an ordinary review would not work here. So here is a long of jumble of thoughts on They Came Together:

This is the MacGruber of romantic comedies: They Came Together is a very specific kind of parody, in that it is both self-aware and unaware. The dinner table conversations are a way to tell the audience to be in on the joke. The flashbacks play it completely straight. They Came Together is an experiment in only using cliches to construct a plot.

They must have had to watch a lot of rom-coms They Came Together feels like it was made by people who have seen way too many romantic comedies, and that is why it usually works so well.

The humor They Came Together comes from the much of the comedy team involved in The State and Wet Hot American Summer. Their sense of humor is based less on jokes and more on absolute absurdity. The dead body in the pile of leaves might just induce the most laughs per capita.

The best point about romantic comedies They Came Together made me realize why rom-coms can never imitate real life: it is because every character and situation is just meant to service the two romantic leads. Every other character is just there to either stop them, support them (such as the sassy sidekick), or provide a miscellaneous piece of information (like David Wain’s office drone who purposefully is not around for any other reason). The rom-com might be the most selfish genre out there.

Amy Poehler What a great lady. She plays both the ditz and the MPDG at the same time and with such ease as well. The surprise on Molly’s face when Joel tells her he also loves fiction books is priceless. I also like the idea that this is a world where, well, not too many people seem to like fiction.

Am I watching I Love You, Man? Don’t get me wrong here, I am a huge fan of I Love You, Man. this 2009 bromance starring Paul Rudd and Jason Segel gets better on repeat viewings. It wasn’t until I watched They Came Together that I realized how many rom-com tropes are in I Love You, Man. The big brother/little brother dynamic in They Came Together felt right out of I Love You, Man. If Paul Rudd is intentionally trying to make fun of himself, then good for him for being a good sport about it.

Playing it straight They Came Together has a surprising amount of dramatic moments and they all manage to be hilarious. That is because they are played completely straight and strangely, the more genuine they are, the funnier they manage to be. Nobody understands movie cliches like these guys do.

A Room reference? David Wain and Paul Rudd were two of the earliest supporters of The Room before it became the cult classic that it is today. I wouldn’t be surprised if the scene in which Rudd and Jason Mantzoukas throw around a football in the office is an homage to that scene in The Room where they toss around the pigskin while wearing tuxedos.

One thing I had trouble with There’s a scene where Paul Rudd goes to visit his Bubee. It is not the Jewish stereotypes I had trouble with (I loved those), but…welll…you’ll see. It just left me feeling kind of weird afterwards, but I think that was the point. It just felt kind of out of place in a film that otherwise chooses all of its scenes and little moments very wisely.

How this ranks in the David Wain filmography This does not reach Wet Hot American Summer or Role Models levels, and I have not seen Wanderlust yet so I cannot compare it. Like Wet Hot, this is an absurd and very specific parody that has the makings of a future classic. I look forward to watching it again soon.

Why we watch romantic comedies I would like to discuss a little moment towards the end. It is hardly a spoiler, because for a movie like this, spoilers would be ruining the best jokes (which I have tried my best not to do). Basically, the moment I am thinking of shows that the story of Joel and Molly is actually much darker than they make it out to be. But they would rather tell this corny rom-com version. This is why rom-coms exist: it is so much easier, and much nicer, to tell a story where true love exists and only comes with easily avoidable obstacles. I like to rip on romantic comedies a lot, but I am not against this idea of more positive storytelling.

Overall, They Came Together is the kind of film that I wish there was more of this summer movie season.

Some of you might already know how I feel about horror films. What you might not know is that I don’t know how to feel about rom-coms. It is a genre that I have greatly enjoyed during a few very brief occasions, and then hated on most others. It is a genre that is already a subdivision of one genre, yet there are so many subdivisions within it as well.

Rom-Coms are not as simple as they may seem. When it comes to rom-coms, I guess you can say that It’s Complicated (Thank you! Thank you very much! I’ll be here all week).

There was a time when rom-coms weren’t necessarily associated with guilty pleasures. “Annie Hall” is the genre’s undisputed champ. It is not just a love story as much as it is about the meaning of love. “When Harry Met Sally,” meanwhile, might contain a big final chase, but it is far from formulaic. That one, too, was deft at being insightful without being annoying (“As soon as you find somebody you want to spend the rest of your life with then you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible!”). I will also include “The Wedding Singer” here, because that movie is goddamn delightful.

Then, rom-coms started to turn. I am not a historian, so I can’t attach an exact date, but it seems like it was in the early 2000s when they found a formula and stuck with it. Suddenly, they started to become something associated with just one gender. With some rare exceptions (“500 Days of Summer”), rom-coms lived in a fantasy land where a pilot would stop an entire plane so you could tell someone on board that you loved them.

Sometimes, I feel like my hatred can be a little unfounded. Maybe it is because I have never been in a serious relationship or because sometimes I am bad at expressing feelings (even though I am a generally loud person) that grand romantic gestures don’t phase me very much. Pair that with the fact that I take my film watching a little too seriously, so any cliches or actions that are completely implausible will throw me off. But I have been trying lately to be a little more open to different forms of entertainment and if watching some rom-coms means that people will stop calling me a hipster, then I am fine with it.

I have two sisters so finding a rom-com worth watching wasn’t hard. They actively encouraged me to watch “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days.” If you haven’t seen it, here’s the basic premise: Kate Hudson plays an ambitious journalist who wants to make a man fall out of love with her in 10 days for an article. Matthew McConaughey plays an ambitious advertising executive who needs to make a woman fall in love with him in 10 days so he can nab a huge account. Of course, the two of them meet and wacky antics ensue.

Now, that is a really solid premise that feels faithful to the days of screwball comedy past. It leaves a lot of room for funny misunderstandings and third act drama. A studio executive would be stupid not to buy into this pitch. I know what will happen in the end, but I still want to see what happens when people with two contrasting goals inevitably have to fall in love. Unfortunately, it also displays everything I hate about rom-coms. People buy into rom-coms so easily, yet they exist in a sort of fantasy world where everybody is white and really successful. All of their homes and apartments look like they could belong to any character in any movie. In “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days,” we are expected to believe that somebody owns a nice beach house in Staten Island that offers a stunning view of all of New York’s landmarks. Realistically, most buildings in New York offer a view of a brick wall.

Another big problem I have with most rom-coms is the absurd divide between the sexes. Bros just want to be bros and play poker and smoke giant cigars and watch basketball. Don’t you know that some of us have asthma? Meanwhile, the girls just want to gossip and go out to brunch all the time. To this movie’s credit, it does a pretty decent job at skewing gender politics. Hudson’s character loves steak and sports, but she has to pretend that she’d rather go to a vegan restaurant during a Knicks game because apparently that is a deal breaker for most guys. “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” is only self-aware sometimes. This seems like a common feature in most of today’s rom-coms. As pointed out in FilmDrunk’s excellent review of “That Awkward Moment,” that particular film was so bizarrely meta that “[the sequel to "That Awkward Moment"] is just going to be a series of zeroes and ones that you ingest via feeding tube.” Sounds about right for the fate of the whole genre.

“How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” might not have worked if it didn’t have such a stellar cast. The reason I referred to the characters by the names of the actors is because the characters are so transparent that the actors are all I can see. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. This movie would probably be pretty flimsy if not for Kate Hudson’s hilarious hissy fit, or the fact that McConaughey has a Texas accent for no apparent reason. The two of them are funny on their own, but even better together. There are also some great supporting players. In a lot of rom-coms, the friends are just there to say “that’s a bad idea,” but the scene where Kathryn Hahn pretends to be a couples therapist is one of the movie’s highlights. Basically, rom-coms are often so interchangeable that what separates a good one from a bad one is whether the actors and actresses have chemistry.

I could get angry at “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” or “Failure to Launch” or “27 Dresses” or many others in the genre, but I feel like films like these teach a valuable lesson. For a hardened cinephile, sometimes a movie can actually be entertaining if you just let go of all of the little cliches. And if you are a realist, accepting the fact that rom-coms are more about what love should be than rather what love actually is, then rom-com logistics won’t bother you as much. Yes, I hate that “How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days” ends with the two leads closing down an entire bridge to declare their love for each other. In the real world, if you close down an entire bridge, then you have to resign from office.

What I am really trying to say is that if you are going to make a derivative rom-com that doesn’t annoy me, then you should probably cast Matthew McConaughey in it.

Can somebody come and save Kate Hudson’s career? Please and thank you.