Alex & the List is a 2018 romantic comedy about an unassuming dog trainer who is in love with a great woman, but blindsided when she produces a detailed list “improvements” he needs to make.
Making grand gestures for the sake of romance in movies is part and parcel to the genre, with many films having characters do some pretty crazy things in hopes of getting the one they want to take notice. However, in Harris Goldberg‘s latest comedy, one might say a line has been crossed in this awkwardly unfunny experience that doesn’t seem to understand from the start that it doesn’t matter what happens in the end if everything leading up to it is a cringeworthy mess. This is a romantic comedy that lacks both romance and comedy.
Alex (Patrick Fugit) is your everyday kinda guy. Not too bad looking, a little charming, kind, stable – he works a pet trainer – and in love with his girlfriend Katherine (Jennifer Morrison). He want to pop the question but is a little nervous, so looks to his friends, include his ex, Lily (Karen Gillan) for some help. See Katherine is high class, a beautiful blonde from a wealthy family, and while she surely has a thing for her man, before she commits sees some opportunities for tweaks to make him perfect. Therefore, she literally makes a list of things to change, writing them down and giving it to Alex to complete before she’s say yes. It’s a rough list, and he at first thinks it’s a bad idea, but when Katherine’s father (Bob Gunton) suggests she choose the Italian hunk Antonio (Gilles Marini) as her future husband, Alex reconsiders and undertakes a painful journey of self-discovery that tests his loyalty.
One of the more transparent problems in any generic romcom is how the ‘other guy/gal’ who temporarily has the protagonist’s love interest all wound up is almost always a loser, either an abusive, self-centered man or a dominating heartless women. With Alex & the List we wonder right from the beginning how our protagonist would ever want to be with the person he’s in love with. It’s made worse with the list itself, a hopelessly shallow and conventional agenda that ranges from brightening teeth to getting a better car to well, becoming Jewish, meaning, you know, circumcision, which don’t worry, we’re forced to watch in one of a dozen moments that just struggles to be funny (the gag being that Alex tries to hold back becoming aroused).
Then there’s the cavalcade of supporting characters who have ingratiated themselves into the list’s completion, tagging along offering all kinds of asides that weight down and pad out what should be a breezy 70-ish minutes into nearly two hours. It’s meant to keep poor Alex in a state of constant unease, but it mostly just thickens the pace, with a string of unconvincing scenarios that never really click.
What’s worse is the overall message, which sure, men and women will do dumb things to try and keep a relationship going, but here it’s just absurd. Katherine’s list is meant to be hokey and jokey and maybe reveal a little about who she is, but the inherent cruelty of what she asks him to do seems to go right over the heads of the filmmakers who plunder opportunities for sharper comedy with bland and obvious setups that lumber across well worn finish lines.
There’s some good things with a few of these characters as the women come off a little better than the men, with Gillan perhaps the best reason to watch. However, the film simply doesn’t have the heart to make any of it matter, stretching a late night parody sketch into a full length feature that trips up before it even begins.