Criticism of ‘Yes, I want… or not’, afternoon comedy with a dream cast

In 1986 Edward Zwick premiered ´What happened last night?´ based on the work ´Sexual perversity on Chicago´ by David Mamet (written in 1974, years before he signed the scripts for ‘The postman always rings twice’ and ‘The verdict ‘, and, of course, receiving the Pulitzer), and starring Rob Lowe and Demi Moore. The film, more than acceptable, in whose script Mamet also collaborated, listened to the sexual and love life of two American men and two women in their thirties, in the key of a foul-mouthed love tragicomedy. The usual themes: love and sex, attachment, understanding, affection, disagreements, escapades and sleeplessness. The fact that few today associate Mamet with that work and wonder why he was involved in a comedy with such a cast and theme in the middle of the frivolous eighties, despite the fact that the play has had a recent new adaptation, shows to what extent the Love, at present, is not considered a transcendent theme in artistic works. In literature, he continues to be associated with best sellers, serials, self-help and airport books; in music, to summer songs; and in the cinema, to films like this one: more or less blockbusters, full of stars, entertaining and uplifting, but with no ambition to last. Airplane cinema, shopping center or Sunday after-dinner.

However, If something catches the attention of ´Yes I want… or no´, it is that it is not a frivolous film or one that is aware of its own lightness. michael jacobsin his directorial debut, It seems to start from a material that really matters to him and that he needs to tell. It is as if the co-creator of the youthful and sentimental ´Yo y el mundo´ (1993-2000), a fundamental piece of popular culture at the end of the last century, wanted to candidly explain to us what he has learned since then in matters of love. And it requires our attention and complicity. I’m not trying to say this is a pretentious film, because when it comes to doing so, it adapts very well to the tropes of the ensemble romantic comedy of tangle, but rather honestly believes in its relevance, even in its urgency. And what counts is not negligible either: despite the fact that his “conservative” halo (An aside: Mamet also went, over the years, from a progressive child prodigy to a furious defender of Trump), his firm commitment to commitment and, incidentally, fidelity, may seem excessively chaste and even rancid to the ears of the new polyamorous youthJacob’s film describes very well, in images and words, the troubles of marriage, the fear of sharing life with the other person, loneliness in the company of the other, the disenchantment of middle agethe urgent need to escape, parenthesis or escape in the form of adultery, the search and encounter with the like in helplessness and the troubles of having survived beauty and glory and having stopped loving those who we believed to be kindred souls. Small stories (unimportant?), places where we have been that, despite not having the approval of official intellectuals and, especially after a certain age, constitute the essence of our day to day, the basic reasons for our peaks and our failures, the last cause that leads us to resist or to give up. The feeling, the idealization of the eternal romance bigger tan life as the last declension of magical thinking.

The autumn of fairy tales

The beginning is excellent. We contemplate the wandering of random and disoriented couples without knowing about their relationships, their ties and their baggage, as if they were the protagonists of a thick Italian farce, a film by Roberto Pérez Toledo or a chapter of those ´Three stories of seduction´ ( 1990) television. Nostalgia seems omnipresent, but not only because of the memory of better times with stronger bodies and less lazy or bloated minds, but also that of another cinema that is now anachronistic and buried. Not so much that of classic comedies (although, how well a quote from Billy Wilder’s ‘On a Silver Platter’ would fit here: ‘marriage is like the army, everyone talks bad about it, but it never ceases to amaze you’) the number of people who join their ranks each year’!!), but also the number of filmmakers who looked to classic Hollywood to tell their own stories: the romantic comedy by Melvin Frank, Gene Saks, Herbert Ross, Charles Shyer, Garry Marshall, Arthur Hiller, Nancy Myers, Nora Ephron or Joel Schumacher from ‘A touch of infidelity’ (1989). Everything from the perspective of the sentimental autumn of the trip, who contemplates with distance and envy the doubts and fears of a new and young couple who will continue the cycle and, like them, will end up running aground in the inevitable disenchantment.

Naturally, ´If I want… or not´ loses a lot of grace when it discovers its letters and intertwines its stories, and in its second part it wastes its purely humorous vaudeville potentialwithout knowing how to sharpen, in turn, the charm of some sequences, such as the cockfight between the characters of Gere and Macy. But we must shake off the anger and resentment of the moth-eaten and circumspect critic that lives inside us to enjoy it in its proper measure. And it is that, despite what those who hate this type of cinema say, It is not a forgettable or expendable titlebecause it contains, by boat soon, three truly memorable sequences that, calm down, are not ‘spoilers’: Gere contemplating with melancholy the cuddling of a young couple in a cafeteria, Keaton short-circuiting before the vision and the supposed interpellation of a television televangelist , and Keaton, again, together with a fabulous Macy, commenting on a porn movie on the television of a remote seedy motel. It is not little for the times that run. Not bad for a silly late-night blockbuster.

For supporters and detractors of ‘love for life’

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DATA SHEET

Address: michael jacobs Distribution: Emma Roberts, Luke Bracey, Richard Gere, Susan Sarandon, Diane Keaton Country: USA Year: 2023 Release date: 21–4-2023 Gender: Comedy Script: michael jacobs Duration: 94 min.

Synopsis: Michelle and Allen have reached a point in their relationship where they are considering the next steps. They decide to invite their parents to finally meet and offer their “wisdom” on how marriage works.