Two people get stuck in an elevator.
Yeah, that's pretty much the plot. On the positive side, the movie doesn't try to milk this idea for a perplexingly long runtime. Even counting the credits, it's only 60 minutes. I'm a bit surprised (and confused) about how this wasn't full of filler. Maybe Netflix decided there's a market for movies not much longer than a short.
I guess this is what's known as a "meet cute". You know, when two characters are ostentatiously forced together in a quirky way so they can fall in love with each other. A stopped elevator is as good a setup as any. The characters don't have anything to do but have quirky and funny interactions with other and abruptly fall in love. Even though most people would probably just stare at their cell phone in awkward silence for an hour.
One joke is recycled a few times: someone says "I'm not an X", they briefly argue about whether the character is an X, and eventually both agree the character is, in fact, an X. It's not exactly laugh out loud funny, but as far as running jokes go, it's alright. It does admirably condense the character development as the leads are forced to acknowledge their foibles.
The two often walk outside of the elevator into each others' memories and daydreams. This is reasonably creative. I thought the writer-director was trying a bit too hard to make everything exaggeratedly quirky, but I guess the requirements of the genre somewhat force this.
In genres that appeal to us, we can fall back on the enjoyable cliches. A science fiction fan can ignore a movie's terrible plot and enjoy the imaginative special effects. I'm not a fan of romantic comedies, so when I watch a mediocre one, it's just a mediocre experience -- there's nothing to fall back on. If you're a fan, though, you'll probably enjoy watching these two doofuses flirt with each other. Perhaps the draw is that if these two can find love, maybe we can, too.
A movie like Muriel's Wedding functions well as a character study. Wristcutters takes all the indie cliches you can think of and twists them into something offbeat. Romantic comedies can be funny, insightful, and genuinely quirky. This one isn't really any different than the others that you might encounter on a streaming service, except that it's in French and respects your time.
No English dub. Just subtitles.
