I Want You Back (2022)

IMDb plot summary: Newly dumped thirty-somethings Peter and Emma team up to sabotage their exes' new relationships and win them back for good.

Directed by Jason Orley. Starring Charlie Day, Jenny Slate, and Scott Eastwood.

I Want You Back is a romantic comedy starring Jenny Slate and Charlie Day as recent dumpees who hatch a plan together to break each other's exes up with their new partners so they can get back together with them. There are no surprises here -- right from the beginning, you know Slate and Day are going to end up together eventually -- but the journey to get there is exactly as charming as I want it to be. They have great chemistry that *matches*, and I love it because they're not necessarily the typical rom com leads. They have a quirkiness to them that fits the other perfectly and makes it feel more like they're real people. There's also a gentleness to this movie that leans more into the romance than the comedy. There are very few laugh-out-loud moments but there are SO many of what I'll call "smile fondly" moments. The moments of humor feel, with one or two exceptions, grounded in realistic characters without going over the top. Overall, it's a sweet movie that accomplishes exactly what it sets out to do.

How it entered my Flickchart:

I Want You Back > Frank

I Want You Back < The Black Cat

I Want You Back > Furlough

I Want You Back > The Descendants

I Want You Back > Frankenweenie

I Want You Back > CBGB

I Want You Back < The Thing (1982)

I Want You Back < Fear of a Black Hat

I Want You Back < Hannah Arendt

I Want You Back > Volver

I Want You Back > A Chorus Line

I Want You Back > Cat on a Hot Tin Roof

Final spot: #948 out of 3592, or 74%.