On paper, The Lovebirds seemed like a movie that would be up my alley. It stars Kumail Nanjiani (and Issa Rae, who I’m not really familiar with), who I absolutely love. Also, it’s directed by Michael Showalter, who also directed The Big Sick, which is arguably Kumail’s most notable movie to date, and one of my favorite comedies in the last few years. And when I saw trailers and heard what the concept of the movie was, I thought it sounded really fun. Yet, somehow, these great things just didn’t add up to a great movie.

In The Lovebirds, Kumail plays Jibran and Issa plays Leilani. These two have been a couple for four years, and what was once a very loving relationship has now turned into constant bickering. This comes to a head when, on the way to a party, the couple decide their relationship isn’t working, and that they should break up. Immediately after this is said, Jibran accidentally hits a guy with a car. The man flees, and Jibran and Leilani are then approached by a guy chasing this man, and he demands that they let him use their car to chase him, since he’s a cop. They do this, and this “cop” ends up murdering the man with Jibran’s car. Suddenly, Jibran and Leilani find themselves wrapped up in a murder that they didn’t mean to get involved in, and stuck in a situation that goes a lot deeper than they were expecting. So, this newly broken up couple must now find a way to put aside their differences and get themselves out of deep trouble.

It sounds fun, right? I thought so too. Which is why I’m not even entirely sure what went wrong with it. At the end of the day, I think it was just as simple as the humor didn’t work for me. This is so strange with the talent involved, but I just found that I was rarely laughing during the movie. There were definitely times where I let out a quick smirk or exhale, but the humor just rarely hit for me. This is disappointing, because I think The Lovebirds could have been a good movie. I think it has things going for it, and winds up being saved from being really bad due to Kumail’s natural humor. But ultimately it’s just not very good either.

This is one of the hardest kinds of movies to review for me, because I just don’t have anything to say about it. I didn’t hate the movie enough to passionately tear it apart, but I also don’t really have anything good to say about it either. It’s such a middle-of-the-road movie that it’s hard to recommend to anyone. And don’t get me wrong, humor is always subjective, so there might be some people that think this is hilarious. It just didn’t work for me personally.

2.5/5