The Lovebirds

Directed by Michael Showalter, The Lovebirds follows Kumail Nanjiani’s Jibran and Issa Rae’s Leilani as they find themselves embroiled in a murder mystery on the very night that they’ve decided to end their relationship. It’s an appealing premise that is, at the outset, employed to fast-paced, entertaining effect by Showalter, as the filmmaker, working from Aaron Abrams and Brendan Gall’s screenplay, does an effective job of developing the affable central characters and their decidedly rocky coupling – with the promising vibe heightened by Nanjiani and Rae’s almost excessively charismatic work and genuine chemistry together. There’s little doubt, then, that The Lovebirds‘ downward trajectory is triggered by an increasingly tedious midsection that emphasizes the protagonists’ episodic exploits, with the decidedly hit-and-miss nature of these encounters and interludes ensuring that the movie grows less and less interesting as time progresses (and it doesn’t help, certainly, that Jibran and Leilana wisecrack their way through the entire picture; there’s never a point at which one gets the impression the characters are even a perturbed by what’s happening to them). The action-heavy yet somewhat anticlimactic third does little to alleviate the mostly underwhelming and mediocre atmosphere, which ultimately cements The Lovebirds‘ place as a disappointingly half-baked comedy that squanders a pair of solid star performances.

** out of ****