Delayed Reaction: Life Partners

The Pitch: Co-dependent best friends have to grow up.

This movie works because Gillian Jacobs and Leighton Meester make that friendship feel very natural. They are both great. I've seen Jacobs in enough things that I recognize the quirks in her performances, but she's able to apply them to very different characters. She's a much bigger screw-up in something like Love than she is in this, but she uses a lot of the same mannerisms in both. Paige (Jacobs) is a stable adult who has just learned to work around her crazy. So, she's able to fall for Adam Brody's character while also having a lot of issues with him. It's a very real character. The same goes to Meester as Sasha. That character is very believable. I like any time when a character is gay without that being the entire identity of her. Her story is one of a 29 year old who isn't sure what she's doing with her life (I relate to that more than a little). She isn't some token character. That's great.

There isn't a major narrative push to this. The stakes aren't all that high. It's a simple movie about friendship and growing up. I like that it doesn't have more on its mind than that. The central relationships are very natural. Most of the secondary characters are cartoonish, which is fine. That adds flavor.

The ending was smartly placed. This is the kind of movie that can easily leave too much open-ended or try to answer too much. The place it left Jacobs and Meester felt right though. Meester realizes that it's ok to let go of her dream of being a musician if that isn't her dream anymore. There's no need to say what she does next. That doesn't matter to the movie. Jacobs still has so major type-A control issues, but she lets go enough to show that her relationship with Adam Brody's character can work. And Jacobs and Meester's friendship is going to be fine, even if it's different now. That's all I need to know about this story and that's all the movie covers.

Verdict (?): Weakly Recommend