Anyone who has ever seen a movie is familiar with the term "low budget." While it's easy to appreciate what a great film maker can do with a low budget, it's frustrating to see what a poor film maker can do with that same budget. The Romantics falls squarely within the latter. This movie is a disaster from the very first frame and never recovers.
What went wrong? You could start with the amazingly generic plot. This movie was only Gillian Jacobs stumbling her way through a British accent away from being the same movie as Helena at the Wedding. I have not read the book that this movie was based upon, but I would wager that it's an unfathomable improvement.
I could forgive the generic plot, and I could even forgive the stilted acting performance from 90% of the cast, but what really makes this movie an unenjoyable mess is the high school production quality of it. The director chose to shoot by hand rather than use a tripod and as result, each scene is a herky-jerky, poorly framed exercise in abysmal cinematography. In fact, if you suffer from motion-sickness, I guarantee this movie will require you to look away at times. As badly as I wanted to pay attention to the movie, I was continually distracted by this fatal flaw. Low budget or not, the first thing the director should've paid for was a tripod. It would have made more sense than the one lone scene where he called for the use of a crane to get a 15-second overhead shot in a scene that was completely useless in the movie.
Lastly, without providing any spoilers for those still brave enough to try this movie, the last five minutes are laughable. The plot comes to a fiery head (finally) within the last five minutes, only for the final shot to cut to black without providing the viewer with any answers. At that point, it's unlikely that you really cared all that much about those answers any way, which is yet another reason why this movie is more of a joke than anything else.
This movie would be perfect for a film school instructor trying to teach the do's and don'ts of film making to a young class, but outside of that, watching it would be a complete waste of your time. The only laughs you'll get from it won't be intentional.
What went wrong? You could start with the amazingly generic plot. This movie was only Gillian Jacobs stumbling her way through a British accent away from being the same movie as Helena at the Wedding. I have not read the book that this movie was based upon, but I would wager that it's an unfathomable improvement.
I could forgive the generic plot, and I could even forgive the stilted acting performance from 90% of the cast, but what really makes this movie an unenjoyable mess is the high school production quality of it. The director chose to shoot by hand rather than use a tripod and as result, each scene is a herky-jerky, poorly framed exercise in abysmal cinematography. In fact, if you suffer from motion-sickness, I guarantee this movie will require you to look away at times. As badly as I wanted to pay attention to the movie, I was continually distracted by this fatal flaw. Low budget or not, the first thing the director should've paid for was a tripod. It would have made more sense than the one lone scene where he called for the use of a crane to get a 15-second overhead shot in a scene that was completely useless in the movie.
Lastly, without providing any spoilers for those still brave enough to try this movie, the last five minutes are laughable. The plot comes to a fiery head (finally) within the last five minutes, only for the final shot to cut to black without providing the viewer with any answers. At that point, it's unlikely that you really cared all that much about those answers any way, which is yet another reason why this movie is more of a joke than anything else.
This movie would be perfect for a film school instructor trying to teach the do's and don'ts of film making to a young class, but outside of that, watching it would be a complete waste of your time. The only laughs you'll get from it won't be intentional.