10 Recent Movies That Tried Way Too Hard To Be Clever
7. Isn't It Romantic
Meta commentary on films within a film is a minefield to walk across; writers and directors must do their best to poke holes in their own genre whilst sticking to the narrative of the plot they are trying to tell.
For characters to be semi-aware they are in a horror flick or a romantic comedy, it makes for the interesting challenge of circumventing expectations. And while The Faculty and Scream did this well with sci-fi and horror respectively, Isn't It Romantic tried to have its cake and eat it too.
Don't get me wrong, there are some legitimately great bits. The "no-swearing" rule, after-sex cutaways and absurd meet-cute moments make for a good laugh, and Rebel Wilson kills it as the self-aware protagonist while Liam Hemsworth proves it's not just his brother who can be handsome and funny.
But a film telling its audience how absurd something is, and then doing it anyway doesn't make a film smart and certainly doesn't give it a free-pass to do the cliches and expect to get away with it. Isn't It Romantic would have been a hoot if it pointed out the classic story structures of a comedy and then went a different direction.