I Want You Back

I Want You Back is a new romantic comedy on Amazon Video that came out over Valentine's Day weekend. I Want You Back follows newly dumped 30-year-olds Emma and Peter as they team up to sabotage their exes' new relationships and win them back.

The premise of the movie is pretty interesting with the two characters trying to break up their exes, it is a little bit different of a story than normal for these types of rom coms and sets up the potential for some funny moments. The movie does have quite a few jokes that got me to laugh as well as some ridiculous situations that you can't help but laugh at. Also the two leads, Emma and Peter, are very likable. You want them to succeed in regaining their relationships and feel bad for them when they get dumped.

However, that is about all of the positives I have for this movie. I would like to preface this by saying that even though rom coms aren't really my type of movie but I still try to get some level of enjoyment out of them. Even moving past that, this film had a lot of issues on a plot and story level that make it an issue for me. The main thing is that while it tries to do something different with the premise of the film, it still follows the rom-com template that most others do. So closely that I was able to predict the ending of the movie within the first five minutes. There was also an issue with some of the humor. While some of it did make me laugh, there was a lot of it that was more of an uncomfortable sort of humor that just didn't work for me. Another issue is that it meanders quite a bit in the middle act of the film, right around when the two friends split off to break up their respective couples, specifically Peter's side. Had this part been a bit more concise I think it would've worked a lot better. Along the same lines, the middle act has this subplot between Emma and one of the kids at the play that is completely unnecessary. I am not even sure why it was there as it adds nothing to the story and does nothing for Emma's character arc. That part could've been removed from the movie and it would not have impacted the plot at all. Finally, I felt that the movie was just a little too long. Typically these types of films are in the 90-100 minute range. As these films don't usually have a lot of plot to them, that time frame can allow the story to flow nicely while not letting anything meander and drag on. This film pushes the 2-hour mark which I think is what caused the meandering in the middle act.

Overall, while this film tries an interesting premise, it ultimately falls flat and just follows in the cookie-cutter rom-com template. While I am not a big rom-com fan, I have seen a lot that are definitely better than this one.

Grade: C Score: 5/10

Recommendation: Unless you really like these types of movies, you can skip this one