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Film reviews: Sleeping With Other People; The Last Witch Hunter

To say Sleeping With Other People is When Harry Met Sally ‘for assholes’ is unfair to those very people in our midst.

Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis in a scene from the film Sleeping With Other People. Madman
Alison Brie and Jason Sudeikis in a scene from the film Sleeping With Other People. Madman

If you have read anything about Sleeping With Other People, the latest anti-romance from American playwright and filmmaker Leslye Headland (Bachelorette, the play and movie), you have probably seen the director’s comment that this film is “When Harry Met Sally for assholes’’. That much-quoted opinion epitomises the problem with the film as a whole: it sounds clever but is in fact stupid.

I don’t think, by the way, that Headland means the film is one that only assholes, or assholes in particular, should flock to see. That would be unfair of her: assholes are people too, and are as prone to disappointment as the best of us. I think she means the two main characters, the Harry and Sally updates, are assholes. The trouble with this is that they aren’t really. If only they were we might have a more interesting viewing experience.

Moreover, Rob Reiner’s When Harry Met Sally, scripted by Nora Ephron, is a superior romantic comedy that holds up as well today as it did on its release in 1989. Billy Crystal’s Harry and Meg Ryan’s Sally are believable characters engaged in a nuanced exploration of the age-old question of whether men and women can be just friends. That is also the dilemma at the artificial heart of Sleeping with Other People, hence Headland’s remark I suppose, but the investigation of it lacks plausibility. Personally I think there’s more realism in The Hobbit films.

We first meet our two putative assholes at New York’s Columbia University in 2002, when Jake (Jason Sudeikis of the Horrible Bosses oeuvre) rescues Lainey (Alison Brie, Trudy Campbell in TV’s Mad Men) from an embarrassing situation caused by her obsession with the most boring man on campus. Jake and Lainey smoke some dope and lose their virginities together. As an aside, I think generally if you are going to start a film with the protagonists’ youthful backstory, you should spring the extra bucks and hire some age-appropriate actors for the roles. Brie, who is in her early 30s, more or less pulls it off, but 40-year-old Sudeikis looks ridiculous.

Fortunately we don’t have to dwell on this because the story then moves forward 12 years to a sex addicts’ meeting where Jake and Lainey, who have not seen each other since that cherry-popping night, both happen to be present. A bit like the asshole thing, neither seems to be a sex addict.

Jake is a womaniser with commitment issues and Lainey has relationships but is still stuck on the campus bore, Matthew Sovochek (an enjoyably tense Adam Scott) who is now a gynaecologist and married (and a cheat).

Jake and Lainey are clearly attracted to each other, and have an advantage most potential new couples do not: they know the sex works. Indeed it’s a fair bet they are in love. So, what’s stopping them from giving it a go? Neither is in a committed relationship (unlike Harry and Sally at various times), has been married before or has children. They live in the same city and are successful, so money isn’t a problem. The only barrier to bliss, it seems, is the need for the film to go on for another 80 minutes or so.

So they decide to be just friends — friends who have “their” restaurant, who shop for lingerie together, who have a safe word to quell uprisings of the mutual hots and — in the film’s nadir — empty a large drink bottle and use it as a stand-in vagina so that he can show her how to masturbate to orgasm. Surely with this single scene we can declare total and absolute victory for the forces of mansplaining.

And so it goes until the utterly predictable ending, a sort of cinematic self-immolation that reduces to ash all the supposed cleverness and hipness that has gone before and makes you wonder why on earth you came.

Somehow it wouldn’t shock me if Vin Diesel was still around in 800 years. He’s just so durable. That’s the impressive length of time he’s been fighting the good fight in The Last Witch Hunter, an amusing enough supernatural action thriller directed by Breck Eisner (Sahara, The Crazies).

Diesel is Kaulder, the witch hunter of the title. We first encounter him in a Game of Thrones-meets-Macbeth scene in which he has a showdown with the Witch Queen (Julie Engelbrecht). He and his flaming sword seem to prevail, but there is a twist in that he’s rendered immortal, which is why he’s still the world’s top coven buster eight centuries later when the action moves to modern-day New York City.

We learn there has been a witch-human truce in place for some time. However there are always a few bad apples bent on wiping out humanity, which keeps Kaulder busy. Indeed it seems the practitioners of dark magic are planning a major evil event.

Kaulder reports to a religious-seeming organisation called The Axe and Cross, where his minder is known as Dolan. At the start of the film he’s been with the 36th Dolan (Michael Caine) for 50 years. But when Dolan 36 suffers a setback, Dolan 37 (Elijah Wood) takes over. Just like the Bush family really. Kaulder also meets a saucy good witch, Chloe (an appealing Rose Leslie, Jon Snow’s wilding lover in Game of Thrones.) Together this unlikely trio will face the forces of darkness.

There are some neat storylines explored here. I like the idea of peaceful witches living legally on Earth, taking selfies on their smartphones like everyone else. When we first meet Chloe she is running a hip witches-only bar. The establishment has not violated any codes, she tells Kaulder when he drops in, “there are no humans here’’.

Kaulder’s longevity is spun to good effect: he calls Caine’s Dolan “kid” and at one point admits: “Salem was wrong. Those women were innocent.’’ Diesel does the one-liners well enough, even if his smirk is in danger of creeping towards the Bruce Willis zone, and the disparity between his Kaulder and Wood’s Dolan adds an enjoyable physical comedy.

Yet while the script has its moments — a warlock spiking cakes with magic insects protests “It is not illegal to sell mind-altering bugs” — it is uneven and there are some real clangers. “She will never truly perish,’’ we are told of the Witch Queen, “ ’til her heart beats its last’’.

When it comes to the action-thriller element, it’s a bit light on, the set-piece witch-fighting scenes too few and far between and rather blandly resolved. The violence is stylised, there’s no swearing or sex, but the supernatural elements might be a bit scary for younger children. I’d suggest 12-plus to err on the side of caution.

Sleeping With Other People (MA15+) 1 star

National release

The Last Witch Hunter(M) 2.5 stars

National release

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/film-reviews-sleeping-with-other-people-the-last-witch-hunter/news-story/3e4d8dbc74906099b08cbbf765fb197a