Mr. Right starts out as a standard romcom, but quickly reveals its violent undercurrent. Martha (Anna Kendrick) has been spinning out of control ever since she found out that her boyfriend has been cheating on her. Then, at the supermarket, she meets a nameless weirdo (Sam Rockwell) and immediately clicks with him. Martha really falls hard for him, only to learn that he's a former professional killer, who has now dedicated himself to only killing people who try to hire hitman. Martha, who is kind of crazy herself, is surprisingly okay with this, but her relationship with him puts her into danger, as she becomes a target for various groups chasing her new body down.
The movie tells a story that involves the killing of several people, and it plays it like a mid-2000s Katherine Heigl romantic comedy. That's the joke, I suppose. The movie toys with the portrayal of relationships in those mainstream romcoms, where people are essentially extolled for doing crazy things. It just takes it to a further extreme, with the primary couple coming to bond over mass murder. It's kind of an intriguing idea, but the execution mostly falls flat. The movie comes off as glib and indulgent. At times, the plotting is lazy to the point of incoherence.
One of the film's antagonists, for example, is told that his plans are stupid several times. This is because his plans are indeed very stupid. But having everyone point that out doesn't acquit the film from its sin of putting together a dumb villain. The film plays it off as a joke, but it doesn't change the dynamics of the story. Any scene with this antagonist still feels tedious, because it doesn't really make any sense. It may be a silly premise with psychopathic characters, but it all might have worked better if they operated within a logical framework that could bring attention to the contrast.
It might have helped to just tone some of it down. Everything is heightened and stylized, so nothing really stands out. The world of the movie is just altogether too crazy, none of its inhabitants capable of reacting realistically to any given situation. Even the people that are supposed to be normal accept all the strangeness a little too quickly. It undermines the main characters, who are supposed to be off-kilter, people who don't quite fit in the world. But the world is so quirky that they almost just fade into the background.
This happens in spite of the fact that the actors playing them are two of the most charismatic performers around. Sam Rockwell is a whirlwind of charm, and Anna Kendrick matches his energy in every scene. There is definitely some spark there, but it just becomes annoying within the context of this movie. They are just another couple of loud things in a movie already bursting with loud things. Only Tim Roth manages to play things a little softer, and he brings a measure of compelling contrast. With his subdued manner, he comes out looking a bit like the hero of the picture, in spite of being a secondary character at best.
Mr. Right feels like a premise that just wasn't thought through. There are certainly intriguing ideas in this mess, a sense of smart satire built on the ridiculousness inherent to a tired mainstream genre. But it stops at the premise. The movie pounds on its single joke, and never develops it into something more meaningful. It ought to be funny, but it isn't. It mostly ends up feeling icky as it treats death and murder as an easy joke. It especially feels flimsy when held up to another film with a similar premise, Gross Pointe Blank, which built something more affecting as it invested in the low-key, small town travails of its characters before heading into the violence. This film starts crazy and then never really goes anywhere.
My Rating:
