My Review of "The Lovebirds"

The Lovebirds is Netflix's latest comedy to be released during the pandemic. They have had some enjoyable ones such as Coffee and Kareem, Extraction and The Wrong Missy. These movies aren't must see movies but they are good diversions if you need to waste a few hours. Sadly I don't know if I can say the same for this movie. The couple dynamics in this movie sort of fell a little flat for me.

This movie starts off with the couple of Leilani and Jibran hitting it off. They've just met each other and they're falling madly in love with each other. Quickly it fast forwards a few years and the two are at each other's throats. They're on their way to a dinner night with a group of friends and are deciding to end their relationship.

All of a sudden they hit a bike messenger with their SUV. The messenger oddly gets up and takes off. A mysterious man claiming to be a police officer commandeers their SUV and chases the messenger. I had a hope for the potential for this movie at this point because it was a pretty funny scene. They were encouraging the officer and giving him tips on how to get the messenger.

When the officer finally catches up to the messenger he runs him over. Leilani and Jibran are obviously shocked at outcome. To make matters worse the officer backs up over and runs the messenger over again and this repeats a few times. They figure out that this officer might not be actually an officer.

As soon as they get out of the car the mystery man runs off and some people passing by notice the horrific accident. Leilani and Jibran know it look incredibly bad and their explanation doesn't make things any easier for themselves. It's flight or fight time and they decide to run away.

Now you have this couple that kind of hate each other running from the cops and trying to figure out how to prove that they're innocent. It's a pretty fun concept and theoretically it should work.

The biggest problem with this movie is that Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani who play the main characters might have done too good of a job playing their characters. They are constantly at each other's throats and I know that the banter between the two is supposed to be the fun part. Unfortunately I didn't really like their back and forth. The two came off as a really annoying couple and I wasn't able to deal with the constant arguing.

Jibran would have all of these comedian observations that really took me out of the movie. I get it though, the absurdity of being in such stressful situations and joking about mundane observations is supposed to be funny. It could seem funny if we talk about it but the tone that the movie was going for doesn't really call for this type of humor.

I wasn't sure what tone they wanted to go for in this movie. Was it supposed to be a mystery movie, a romantic movie or a goofy comedy? Even the comedy wasn't exactly consistent either. You'd have this goofball aspect to the movie and then it would be some dry humor and then you'd have some observational humor. It was kind of all over the place. A nice aspect was that they attempted to throw in some political correct jokes throughout the movie. I didn't find that they worked but then again I might be too old to appreciate these type of jokes.

This is really unfortunate because I really did go in wanting to enjoy this movie. Granted there are a few good moments here and there but I thought that the bad outweighed the good this time around.

Overall, this movie had only a few laughs and felt a little messy. The leads are very talented and I hope they find better projects to work on. I unfortunately can't suggest this movie. I have to give this movie a 5 out of 10. A little more focus would have done this movie well.