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Aug 9, 2012100This film has a voice of its own. And at a time when the romantic comedy seems to be a lost art form, that's saying something.
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91I will say that it's been a while since a romantic comedy mustered this much charm by looking this much like life.
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88It's hard to know whether this is a function of the sympathetic screenplay or of Krieger's sympathetic direction - or both - but Celeste and Jesse are endearing even when they do unsympathetic things.
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88I'm not surprised that Rashida Jones took the lead in writing this screenplay; the way things are going now, if an actress doesn't write a good role for herself, no one else is going to write one.
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83It's as if we were watching one of those buddy-buddy bromances told, this time, from the perspective of the woman who is normally on the sidelines of the men's attentions and affections. It's a welcome angle.
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80It is a tremendous performance by Jones, who co-wrote the script with her own ex-boyfriend Will McCormick, who appears as a drug-dealing friend with surprisingly grounded advice for just about anything.
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75To its credit, Celeste and Jesse Forever wants to be more than a formulaic farce. It succeeds to the extent that the neighbors keep up with Jones.
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75Unlike most rom-coms, Celeste and Jesse Forever delves into the complicated heart of relationships, exposes some painful truths and allows melancholy to co-exist alongside breezy humor.
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75Despite flouting Hollywood clichés, it nevertheless manages to be both romantic and funny even though it starts with the separation of the main couple.
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75Jones is first-rate (and her fellow writer McCormack is fun as the wild-eyed pot dealer, Skillz). The film has a conventional fake-documentary look, but underneath it is an honest concern about how to learn to treat people well and kindly after the end. Or to get to an ending, or a new beginning, in the first place.
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75What really lifts Celeste and Jesse Forever above the rom-com herd, besides breakout star performances from Jones and Samberg, is the movie's willingness to replace clichés with painful truths. It's irresistible.
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75Forever doesn't deviate terribly from the can-we-be-friends-after-sex playbook, but it rarely opts for hysterics or contrivance to push our leads along, so long as you can swallow the amicability with which they initially divorce.
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Jul 30, 201275An honest and breezily melancholic film, thoroughly clear-sighted in its intentions and ideas and bravely committed to the emotional rigors of its central relationship.
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Aug 6, 201270It's a highly imperfect movie - many of the gags are strained, a bit too pleased with their own finger-on-the-pulse zinginess - but it still represents a breakthrough of sorts, a way of looking at marriage that resists portraying a "failed" marriage as a failure.
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70There are moments when the film is a little too precious, taking time to preen at just how clever it is.
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Aug 2, 201270Celeste and Jesse Forever creates a handful of likable and very human characters, so much so that halfway through you want the film to stop putting them through the emotional wringer so that you can just spend time with them.
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70While Celeste and Jesse is decidedly conventional in most respects, it's pretty swell as an exploration of a relationship between a man and a woman that's no longer predicated by mutual desire.
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70It ends up being surprisingly touching, despite the fact that you start rooting for the cloyingly cute Celeste and Jesse to break up almost from the first frame.
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70Jones is great in the part, even if this movie doesn't quite prove she should be carrying films on her own, and the actress makes her character's clumsy heartache feel like more than a plot point.
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67The whole thing is a step above studio romantic comedies, but that's not saying much.
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63The movie is sardonic, hip, heartfelt, surprisingly white, and for all its ensemble pleasures, it's squarely about a furiously prim young woman and how she learns to bend.
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63It may have the faintest relationship to any kind of reality, but Jones' tart performance cuts through the saccharine.
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Nov 25, 201260This honest, if not funny, comedy is all about Celeste. If anyone can make you sympathise with affluent LA yuppies, Rashida Jones can.
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Jul 31, 201260Jones writes herself a couple of powerful scenes and plays them well, but she and director Lee Toland Krieger don't find many memorable uses for Samberg as her blandly schlubby hubby.
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58Well-intentioned but underdeveloped and self-satisfied, it feels at times like the ultimate movie for the millennial generation, or at least its stereotype.
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50Celeste and Jesse Forever engages in Bridget Jones-like comedy of mortification, sending its heroine down a path of self-discovery that ultimately seems more cruel than revelatory.
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50If nothing else, the shaggy romantic comedy Celeste And Jesse Forever establishes that Parks And Recreation's Rashida Jones is a movie star.
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50Celeste & Jesse Forever earns points for bucking formula, but its fusion of snark and sincerity has a calculated slickness that rings increasingly hollow.
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42If you prefer hipster romantic comedies that are unromantic and not too funny, Lee Toland Krieger's movie may be your grande half-caf caramel mocha frappe.
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Dec 3, 201240A low-fi indie that swiftly slums into terminal feyness.
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40Celeste and Jesse Forever isn't a movie many people will outright hate, but if this is the most original romantic comedy that Hollywood can muster, forever can't come soon enough.
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40The more these two likable people rattled on, the more I found myself thinking about the elusive distinction between characters talking genuinely smart talk and simply chattering for the camera.
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40Jones co-wrote the uneven script with Will McCormack, and one can't help wishing she'd aimed higher. Acknowledging cineplex clichés isn't enough if you still wind up embracing, rather than subverting, them.
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Jul 31, 201240Throughout, stereotypes are trotted out so that the movie can wink that it's too smart for them.
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30This movie will not find an audience. It's got likable stars, a reliable commercial genre and a decent supporting cast, but nobody will turn out to see it, even if it was a labor of love.
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25You don't believe Celeste for a minute when she tells a new guy that she needs to be alone for awhile. You know he's coming back in short order to provide the happy ending. Here's hoping she doesn't want him to get a job, too.
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Aug 2, 201225So why are they divorcing, you ask. Who knows? Certainly not the creators of the very confused Celeste and Jesse Forever.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 2 out of 4
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Mixed: 1 out of 4
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Negative: 1 out of 4
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Can a man and a woman just be friends?