They Came Together (2014)

(On Cable TV, February 2015) If you can’t be bothered to watch yet another romantic comedy, then how about a romantic comedy parody?  They Came Together takes aim at rom-com clichés with a considerable amount of deadpan sarcastic silliness, using actors who have played those very same roles dozens of time before.  To its credit, writer/director David Wain doesn’t try to parody specific scenes or movies, but stick to the archetypical structure of romantic comedies as a clothesline on which to hang the gags.  (“Oh, and… Thanks.”) Paul Rudd and Amy Poehler ably anchor a large cast of familiar comic actors, which adds to the interest.  As the kind of comic film that embraces absurdity and is willing to try just about anything to get a laugh, They Came Together is definitely uneven: good jokes can be followed by dumb stuff, and the film is a bit too fond of the idea that some things are funnier the more often they are repeated.  (“Oh, and… Thanks.”)  The humor is a bit snarkier-than-thou –which is a way of saying that some will laugh a lot and others won’t see the point.  It may be a bit too clever for its own good at times, but I’ll take excessive cleverness over the kind of painfully unfunny stupidity that parodies have all-too-often become over the past two decades.  They Came Together is best seen without too many preconceptions, and funny enough to stock up a late evening.