I knew nothing about Juliet, Naked going into it except that it was a new Judd Apatow movie and that it had a weird title. I went in with no expectations and winded up being pleasantly surprised. Some interesting movies come out of Apatow Productions sometimes, since they don’t all wind up being straight-up comedies. So, Juliet, Naked isn’t one of the laugh-out-loud comedies like Anchorman, but rather is more similar in tone to something like Begin Again. It has some laughs sprinkled in, but it actually winds up being more focused on tackling some interesting subject matter.

Juliet, Naked follows the story of a near-middle-aged woman named Annie, who has been in a long-term relationship with Duncan. Annie has been secretly yearning to start a family, but Duncan is adamantly against it. Instead, Duncan seems to only obsess over the arts. In particular, he is perhaps the biggest fan in the world of fictional musician Tucker Crowe, a man who made a few big hits and then randomly stopped making music and has since been living in secrecy for the past few decades. Life changes for Annie and Duncan when Duncan receives a package entitled “Juliet, Naked,” a never-before-heard acoustic demo version of Tucker Crowe’s “Juliet” album. Annie gets fed up with Duncan’s obsession, and writes a scathing review of “Juliet, Naked” online, but winds up having her life changed when Tucker Crowe himself reads the review and emails her about it. The two begin to have a secret online email correspondence, and so Annie begins to develop feelings for Duncan’s musical obsession.

I found it to be an extremely interesting premise, and one that winds up paying off in really fun ways as the movie goes on. My only real problem with the movie is that for a movie that’s supposed to be a romantic comedy, it’s not all that funny. The romance angle is definitely the more interesting part here, but the entertainment value just simply isn’t as strong as it could be in some parts of the movie.

The most interesting thing about the movie to me is the topics that it chooses to explore. For one thing, a personal interest to me is the negative effects of being obsessed with the arts, since that’s something that I can relate to. There were moments where I saw myself in Duncan, and that scared me because of how negatively he’s portrayed in the movie. This theme really plays into what I consider to be the main theme of how we tend to think of celebrities as more than people, that have lives so much crazier than ours, when in reality many of them are no more different than we are. We see how much Duncan obsesses over what Tucker Crowe has been up to in the time since he stopped making music, and then when we see Tucker Crowe’s actual life we find it to be a pretty sad affair. Tucker is really just trying to deal with the repercussions of the mistakes of his youth, and try to pick up the pieces and build a better future. At the end of the day, it’s pretty boring how normal of a person he is, and yet many of us can be guilty of romanticizing the lives of celebrities in the same way. This isn’t a topic I see explored often in movies, so it was a breath of fresh air for the romantic comedy genre.

I don’t necessarily consider Juliet, Naked to be a must-see or anything, but I do think it’s really great. It’s a thoughtful movie, and so if the concepts or messages here interest you at all, then it’s probably worth your time. In addition, there’s some good talent here, with the main cast being Rose Byrne, Chris O’Dowd, and Ethan Hawke, all three being actors that I really like. I don’t think you’re missing a classic or anything by not seeing it, but you are missing a pretty unique experience in the genre. I really enjoyed Juliet, Naked, and so I can give a personal recommendation of it to those that have the same tastes as me.

4/5