How To Be Single (2016)Starring: Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson, Alison Brie, Leslie MannDirected By: Christopher Ditter Written By: Abbey Kohn, Marc Silverstein, Dana FoxRelease Date: Feb 12, 2016Rating: 1/5Summary: Deciding she wants to be alone to discover herself, Alice breaks up with her long time boyfriend and moves in with the sister, Meg, a doctor who's career means more to her than anything else and with the help of her fun-loving friend, Robin, Alice begins to learn just what it means to be single. My Thoughts: This movie did not need to be made in my opinion. I saw He's Just Not That Into You a long time ago and loved it. I even read the book it was adapted from, which was my first crack at any sort of self help book ever and again, loved it. Now, here we are years later with the adaptation of the same author's debut novel and I was very, very let down.In He's Just Not That Into You, the movie follows the story of many different people and we watch their stories interweave as the movie progresses and in the end, the story wraps up and we're left with some sort of conclusion. In this movie, we follow the stories of these young women as they progress through their lives, but is there a conclusion? Sort of? Actually, not at all. The theme of the movie is being single and enjoying life while you're single, but throughout most of the film, it involved Dakota Johnson's character, Alice, being not all that single, drinking and partying. Is this what it means to be single today? Going out and drinking until your liver dies out? Sleeping with random men on a daily basis without catching sort of any disease? I would've paid even more money to see our lead get pregnant or an STD. That sure would've made the film a hell of a lot more interesting. Or going out and getting a sperm donor because you aren't in a relationship and wanting a kid like Leslie Mann's character does? Everything that goes on in the film muddles the message of it. The film is titled How to Be Single, but is it explaining to us how to do so? Not at all. And while the film centers around Alice, we get a look into the lives of her sister, her friend and...some random girl played by Alison Brie who has no relation to any of those other characters whatsoever. We literally could have cut her character out of the movie and no one would have cared, nor would it have disrupted the flow of the movie as she was so distanced from it.However, what didn't bring the movie down was the acting. Leslie Mann, Alison Brie and even Dakota Johnson, regardless of how much I dislike her, all did pretty well in this movie. It was entertaining at some points, I'll give it that, but apart from a few jokes here and there (even though most of them were shown in the trailer), there was no substance. I cared enough about the cast to keep watching, but their problems didn't add to the overall message of the film, and what was going on wasn't even all that interesting. Each character was given some trope of some sort from the rom-com genre and that's it. No development from it whatsoever. But again, this is all because of the writing. They worked with what they could, which wasn't much.So, How To Be Single is a movie that doesn't teach you how to be single, but more so how to make reckless decisions and hope for the best. If you're so, so bored and this is on TV for free, by all means, watch it, but don't go out of your way to see it. It's not worth it, I promise you.
