The Romantics is the kind of bland romantic melodrama that breeds resentment instead of sympathy for its young protagonists. Based on a novel by the same name written by director/writer Galt Niederhoffer, The Romantics is a lusterless portrayal of unrequited love gone sour over time. Filled with distracting, blousy pop songs and rote burnt-out character types whose rowdy bad behavior defines their blasé poses and the defining lack of romance in their lives, The Romantics is basically Garden State by way of Margot at the Wedding.
The Romantics turns out to be just another contrived story about a 30-year-old white woman in crisis who gets her voice back after years of allowing others to speak for her. Laura (Katie Holmes) is that mojo-less cipher, and the event that will give her back the right to throw a tantrum and enjoy a happy ending is the marriage of her ex-boyfriend Tom (Josh Duhamel) and her ex-best friend Lila (Anna Paquin).
Unhappily married couples Tripler and Peter (Malin Akerman and Jeremy Strong) and Weesie and Jake (Rebecca Lawrence and Adam Brody) and their creepy drunk friend Chip (Elijah Wood) traipse about the periphery of Laura’s overplot but are ultimately just foils for her discontent. Laura never got her Prince Charming and, at the 11th hour, she must so that somebody in the film can go home happy. Well, maybe somebody other than Candice Bergen, who sadly has an overglorified walk-on role as Lila’s mom.
Niederhoffer fails to make his characters’ fear of being drab and tired relatable, mostly because he considers strictly functional expository dialogue to be an adequate expression of deep-seated discontent. Paquin and Holmes both gag on climactic pseudo-Chayefyskian monologues that sound nothing like real human speech. After balking about how significant Keats’s Ode to a Nightingale once was to Tom and herself, Laura desperately pouts, “You inspired me!”
Niederhoffer just doesn’t know what to do with the considerable resources he has on hand, like when he prematurely cuts away from a gorgeous overhead shot of the thirtysomethings as they come ashore after a late-night swim, robbing the take of any potential meditative heft. Maybe if Murphy Brown had more screentime, Niederhoffer would have something.
