Boy meets girl. Boy loves girl. Boy and girl part. Boy and girl reunite years later. Boy and girl wonder if it can work out this time.
It’s a familiar recipe; one, that when infused with enough truth, wit and real emotion, can become something irresistible and nourishing.
Then again, it can more easily be a ready-made frozen meal that merely reheats and rehashes pre-packaged formulae and processed emotional additives.
It’s familiar, energy-preserving and filled with enough genre carbohydrates to leave you ripe for an afternoon nap.
This is the comfort offered by Standby, Rob and Ronan Burke’s predictable, warm and occasionally charming romcom about Alan and Alice (Brian Gleeson and Jessica Paré); first loves reunited in their late 20s.
Gleeson proves affable and relatable as a man who abandoned his dreams of financial success in the recession, and his dream of romantic fulfilment at a brideless alter. As Alice and Alan lie to each other about their respective achievements, the film addresses the stagnation faced by modern 20-somethings who were taught to fly high before being suddenly and unapologetically grounded.
The strengths of the film lie in tiny insights and interactions: the deadpan humour of nosy co-workers; Dublin’s lack of tolerance for pretension in pub-based mating rituals; the irresistible warmth of Stanley Townsend’s fatherly advice.
It’s these passing nothings that add up to Standby’s something; a nicely observed portrait of Dublin banter and the sarcastic Irish armour so often placed over emotion.
However, these insights prove piecemeal in an otherwise uninspired offering that runs the gamut of cliché from a wedding-crashing sequence to a musical interlude and lots of airport-situated emotional revelations. Autopilot: engaged.
IN CINEMAS NOW.