Irreplaceable You is a 2018 comedy drama about a couple who have known each other since they were children, destined to be together until death do them apart.
You want to like Irreplaceable You. Seriously. The title, the premise, the couple. The whole thing. You want to like it. This is a movie with plenty of heart and a pair of earnest performances yet somehow skirts away from its potential and skids into a strange ethereal plane that leaves it feeling false, even as it tries hard to be edgy. Admittedly, it’s not an easy subject, and there’s no lack of effort, it just can’t connect like it should.
Abbie (Gugu Mbatha-Raw) is in love, engaged to Sam (Michiel Huisman), a guy she’s been friends with since they were little kids. They’re the perfect couple, planning for the future, ready to start the next phase of their lives together. She even thinks she might be pregnant. At the doctor’s though, things don’t turn out so happy. She’s got Stage 4 cancer and there’s no turning it around. With only months left, she has a lot to do, including finding a new woman for Sam, though that’s only a drop in the bucket.
Written by Bess Wohl and directed by Stephanie Laing, Irreplaceable You is inherently sad. That’s the point. Cancer in movies is always so, even when its dressed up in comedy. It’s not that the movie is trying for laughs in the traditional sense, the humor coming from the humanity of it all. Abbie has to cancel her wedding but also her gym membership. She wants to learn how to cook a chicken, happily gives up yoga, and more. These are honest moments and should work but like much of the movie, feels oddly distant. Perhaps it’s the artificial setting, their impossibly Hollywood-esque apartment, mixed with the often contrived dialogue. When Abbie shows Sam how to use the laundry machine, she chokes up when adjusting the dial for how much time is left. Then they make out. Then she gets sick. Then he jokes, he has that effect on women. Too soon? That’s a running gag. I don’t mean there aren’t moments that are better, it’s just that the unearned bits all fall flat.
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Abbie also attends a group therapy session, hosted by Mitch (Steve Coogan) and populated by a cast of colorful dying people, including Kate (Kate McKinnon) and Myron (Christopher Walken), who take to befriending Abbie and giving her courage. Abbie and Myron spend a lot of time together, shopping and talking, helping each other face their fates. The people in this group actually offer the most emotional impact, even as they are introduced as more comedic relief, Kate lowering the boom in the third act that especially resonantes. These people are here to give the heartache of cancer the heaviest weight, and do so very well, Walken and McKinnon delivering deeply sentimental turns. It’s a little too bad it distracts from Abbie, whose battle with this impossible fight is purposefully sanitized for the story.
There’s a lot to like about Irreplaceable You, even as it struggles with tone. Mbatha-Raw and Huisman are a highly charismatic on-screen couple, with Mbatha-Raw doing her best to pull us into Abbie’s end. Tamara Tunie is also very good as Abbie’s mother. To be sure, cancer isn’t easy to put in the movies, and any film that tries to give it some meaning deserves appreciation. I appreciate Irreplaceable You, even as it never wholly feels authentic.