Lovebirds (2020)

As a somewhat standard romcom  film involving a bizarre murder, Lovebirds (2020) sure carries some of its own beat and authenticity. A lot of the film's spirit comes from the film's two stars: Issa Rae (playing Leilani) and Kumail Nanjiani (as Jibran) playing a couple on the brink of break up. 

The film had a lot of potential, but overall as some of the other reviews I've read said: the movie doesn't quite add up to the sum of its parts.  

It starts out extremely realistic with the couple having fun and starting what seems to be a perfect relationship, only for it to turn into a spiral of arguments 4 years later. The arguing moves from trivial things (like scheduling "freaky sex") to more serious things like questioning each others' character.

Right when they've come to the breaking point of their relationship, they hit a bicyclist who looks like he's being chased down. There's a "cop" that soon requests to take over their car to follow the bicyclist, with both of them in the passenger's seat. Soon the couple find themselves witness to a murder and have to spontaneously think of how to extricate themselves from it. Especially since they've been suspected by a couple of bystanders. 

"The woman happens to be african american and the man happens to be a person of color too. But I'm not racist, they actually did perform the murder", the bystander says. 

With a couple of minority main characters, the film does touch upon the effect of race in relation to the police. Neither Leilani nor Jibran think their chances are high of convincing the police that they're not involved in the crime because of the color of their skin, which prompts them to try to figure out the mystery of the murder on their own. 

What comes after that seems to be a movie that is trying too hard. 

The events that spiral afterwards are a bit random, and I feel like there were parts of the film that didn't quite reach the height of comedy like they could have. The couple was really likable but I wish that the film paid them more justice. Some of it felt extremely contrived to just turn the movie into a slapstick comedy, and we only see the couple have moments with each other in between heists; and the moments seem like an afterthought. There are definitely more pensive moments needed; and clever ones with the storyline to tie it all together, because from what I saw, the story seemed like a hodgepodge of complete randomness.

Overall though, I'd recommend the film for a few laughs. And I'm happy at how diverse we're becoming!