Movie of the Week: Set It Up

Alexa: Like a comfy pair of sweatpants or a really good glass of wine, there is something immensely comforting about watching super attractive people fall in love in a big city. As Joel mentions, this type of movie used to be everywhere, but the classic rom-com done well is hard to come by these days, which is perhaps why “Set It Up” feels so refreshing. Naturally, it’s cheesy and implausible but oh so delightful. It adheres to the late 90s/early 2000s style and formula but updates it for the modern age (complete with Tinder references, natch) in a way that doesn’t feel overbearing. You’ve still got your classic meet cute between the two leads, the career-versus-love conundrum, the horrible significant others who are so not right for our central couple, the fun best friend. It hits all the standard beats, but as with any good rom-com, the success of “Set It Up” rests on the shoulders of its leads, and all four are pitch perfect here. Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs are great supporting players. Diggs in particular leans into his role and the result is hilarious. He should really do more comedy. But stars Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell have such a dynamic presence. They’ve got charm in spades and they have exceptional chemistry together. So if you’re a rom-com person, curl up on the couch with a glass of rosé and give “Set It Up” a shot.

Joel: It seems like in the early 2000s there was a movie like this coming out every other week. A light hearted fluffy romantic comedy where two people would fall in love through a series of madcap hijinks and perhaps a misunderstanding or two. Set It Up is designed to hit that exact formula. It has all the greatest hits of that era of romcom. A girl trying to balance love and work at the same time. A guy who is dating an obvious bimbo that he clearly won’t end up with as he grows as a character. A fun dance at a party that turns into a slow dance because the DJ decides to change the tone of the party at the exact right moment. The required gay best friend/roommate is even in this movie. Netflix is clearly going for a specific type of movie here, and they are able to recreate something that feels like it was put in a drawer in 2002 and was only recently discovered.
Set it Up doesn’t exactly try to be a great movie. It’s a consistent movie to be sure, but it’s the kind of movie that works to get a base hit every single time without ever even thinking about swinging for a home run. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. Set It Up sets out to achieve everything it sets out to do. It’s able to recreate the exact feel that it’s going for and that’s a feeling of comfort, especially if you were a certain age when this particular brand of romcom was in vogue a decade and a half ago. The four leads are all pleasant to watch and pleasant to look at, which is of course is a critical element of the success of a movie like this. The secondary couple (Taye Diggs and Lucy Liu) are more fun to spend time with and they’re the more extreme, ridiculous characters, but it’s likely that any more time spent with them would have given their part of the movie an unpleasant feel. All in all it almost feels like this is a movie that is created by an algorithm following a formula, but looking at the end result, this algorithm knows what it’s doing.

Chris: Set It Up found a happy medium in my brain. I accepted early on that it wasn’t going to be a cinematic masterpiece and it ended up not being so bad every little thing drove me insane and felt the need to pick apart every little thing wrong with it. Although this movie does break one rule of mine but did so in the benefit of the story: it explained instead of showing. The entire movie is based on the relationship of their bosses and yet we never actually see any dates or arguments or anything that the actual main characters weren’t present for. Instead, we see and hear about what happened as the main characters are finding out, plus it keeps the focus on the main characters and their progression through the movie because, as you probably predicted in the first few minutes of the movie, they’re the real romance of this story. This movie had a very “first time director” feel to it in both positive and negative ways and this feeling was confirmed to find out this was Claire Scanlon debut movie (although she has a list of ridiculous number of tv shows that she’s directed episodes of) and I saw it as a good example of the point being made about Harper’s first draft of her article. A director’s first movie isn’t going to be perfect but it’s valuable experience to build on. Like I said at the beginning, it isn’t a masterpiece but at the same time, it isn’t a half bad first movie.

Jason: I literally hated every character in this movie. They were all awful people. Honestly, I’m surprised that I had even that much of an emotional reaction to any of this nonsense. This film is the film equivalent of eating a saltine cracker. It has zero substance, zero value, and leaves me feeling hungrier than I was before.

I watched this with my lovely wife (bless her soul) who, as the credits were rolling, said something about a rooftop scene at an engagement party. I had to have her describe the scene because I forgot that it had even happened. I have nothing nice to say about this one. If you enjoy this kind of fluff crap, then go forth and enjoy your water sandwich. It’s not for me.