Written by Matt Serword
Directed by Don Argott & Sheena M. Joyce
USA, 2015
Like an ill-advised one-night stand, the new indie rom-com Slow Learners starts out great and ends with ugliness and deleted phone numbers. Directors Don Argott and Sheena M. Joyce derail their fun premise and quirky characters with an ultra-jaundiced view of modern dating. It’s commendable that the filmmakers try to give Slow Learners a harder edge, but it just makes you wish these adorable characters were in a nicer movie.
You know a blind date isn’t going well when she confides that, “You look like a lesbian newscaster.” Such is the plight of High School guidance counselor Jeff Lowry (Adam Pally). He’s 30 years-old, hosts a weekly book club for equally-desperate losers, and his mom thinks he’s gay. His dotty (but cute) co-worker, Anne (Sarah Burns), isn’t faring much better. Her doctor informs her that she’s “clinically abstinent,” which might explain why she’s desperate enough to consult a reality television show called Prisoner of Love for dating tips. Now that summer break has finally arrived, these two lovable nerds are ready to abandon their sexless existence and make up for lost time.
The first 30 minutes of Slow Learners is delightful. Witty and observant, Anne and Jeff convey the predicament of two frustrated horn-toads cast adrift in a sea of sexual freedom. Everyone is getting lucky, yet they can’t seem to find a lottery ticket. Of course, they’re perfect for each other, but that would require a level of emotional honesty that neither Anne nor Jeff yet possesses. Before they can be united, they must learn some hard lessons, and the filmmakers seem intent upon inflicting maximum punishment.
Anne takes the brunt of the pain, being reduced to a drunken, belligerent party girl who resembles nothing of the bumbling, sweater-wearing cutie we came to love. Writer Matt Serword doesn’t teach his characters lessons so much as validate all of their degrading assumptions about women. When Jeff accidentally KO’s someone in a bar fight, he immediately has two beautiful women swooning over him. Anne has similar success by dancing atop a bar while fondling a female patron. Suddenly, she’s transformed into a liberated, powerful woman who can let any random dude suck booze out of her navel. There’s an undercurrent of contempt for Anne that is genuinely unsettling.
This debasement might be tolerable if the second half of Slow Learners was actually funny. It is not. The comedy evaporates the moment Anne and Jeff decide to cut loose. They cease being sympathetic characters, leaving us with a romantic comedy that is neither romantic nor comical. Anne and Jeff sink so deeply into their douchebag personas that we no longer recognize the vulnerability that made them so hilarious in the opening act. It’s just a procession of mindless drinking, debauchery, sadness, and recrimination. Unless you’re on the road with Mötley Crüe, that’s not a lot of fun to watch.
Minus the comedy, this isn’t exactly stinging social commentary, either. Be yourself. Promiscuity doesn’t ensure happiness. The sky is blue. Surely we could delve more deeply into Millennial frustration with two such thoughtful characters? The filmmakers render this impossible, however, by transforming Anne and Jeff from plain Janes (and Jeffs) into bitchin’ players much too fast. There is no progression or regret; just a series of unfunny gags expounding upon a point that we understood immediately.
Luckily, there are some wonderful supporting turns to keep us slightly interested as the story veers out of control. Jeff’s book club regulars, Dan (Gil Ozeri) and Lenny (Bobby Moynihan), are hysterical every single time they appear, which is too infrequently. A highlight is Lenny’s detailed explanation for the genius of wearing socks with open-toed sandals. Also terrific are Jeff’s long-suffering mother (Marceline Hugot) and father (Kevin Dunn), whose exasperated sincerity never feels saccharine or suffocating. Sure, these scenes are episodic and largely unnecessary to the greater story, but they also remember that this is a comedy (i.e. they are supposed to be funny!).
Slow Learners is a textbook example of how a clever premise can go horribly wrong. What starts as a warm and sincere romantic-comedy quickly degenerates into an ugly diatribe on casual promiscuity. Worse still, the journey into oblivion is neither informative nor entertaining. It’s boggling how a film that freely quotes from classic literature like Tommyland could be so shallow. Even with a strong finish that does the rom-com genre proud, we feel very little happiness for our castigated couple. Mostly, we just pity them. There must have been a kinder, funnier way to learn these lessons.