"How to Be Single" - The Last Rom Com
How a 2016 Dakota Johnson vehicle signaled the end of an era for the studio rom com - and why we may never be able to go back
I submitted this article for an online magazine issue on romantic comedies. It didn’t make the cut, but for Valentine’s Day I wanted to share my thoughts on a feel-good film I return to pretty consistently.
In 2016, the end was already near for the studio romantic comedy.
Suddenly, the stars of the 90s/00s boom were dimming with no bright young ingenues to replace them. Katherine Heigl had spun out rather than being the rom com’s savior, and stars like Matthew McConaughey had won Oscars only after escaping the genre. By the mid-2010s, the number of studio-produced films in the genre had dwindled to legacy sequels (Bridget Jones’s Baby) and the last gasps of the Apatow empire (Trainwreck). Hallmark Channel original films had already mass-produced happy endings to huge ratings success - with Netflix original romantic comedies not far behind. The future of the rom com seemed to be in cheaper stars and more disposable product.
How to Be Single may have appeared to be just another film, released by Warner Bros and produced by Drew Barrymore in time for Galentine’s Day. In reality, it was the studio romantic comedy’s last stand.
How to Be Single felt tailored for a different era even upon release, like a Lucky Brand denim jacket lost to time. The ensemble cast (Dakota Johnson, Alison Brie, Rebel Wilson, and Leslie Mann all share space on the poster) was in the tradition of latter-day rom coms like Love, Actually, He’s Just Not That Into You and Garry Marshall’s megawatt Valentine’s Day. These star-stuffed films, meant to “eventize” the rom com, were starting to have trouble drawing audiences by 2016. Rather than devoting equal screen time to its various storylines, How to Be Single pivoted its focus to its most bankable star.
Already rom com royalty as the daughter of Working Girl star Melanie Griffith, Dakota Johnson was quite literally thrust into the spotlight as the star of Fifty Shades of Grey in 2015. The adaptation of the bestselling erotica made Johnson the face of a franchise overnight. How to Be Single followed the time-honored tradition of minting a new star with a romantic vehicle.
Johnson plays Alice, who starts the film single after breaking up with her college beau played by Nicolas Braun (well before Cousin Greg became the Internet’s boyfriend).
By the time Johnson starts her Big Job in the Big City, Taylor Swift’s “Welcome to New York” playing as she crosses a CGI Williamsburg Bridge, the audience knows exactly how the beats of Alice’s story will play out.
From there, the film develops into the starry-eyed relative of Girls and Sex in the City, with Rebel Wilson (a big name in comedy between Pitch Perfect films) playing the Samantha to Johnson’s Carrie Bradshaw. Her character Robin helps Alice navigate the world of dating for the first time - laying down rules such as “guys pay for drinks” and enforcing an emoji ban when texting with bachelors. On the other end of the “single” spectrum is Alice’s sister Meg, an OB/GYN who is having a baby without a partner via sperm donor (obviously she immediately falls for Jake Lacy, an actor whose gentle appeal has made him the ideal “nice guy” in rom coms like Obvious Child). Then there’s Alison Brie’s Lucy - the most underserved character who only has a tertiary relationship with Alice and company. She’s trying online-dating before the explosion of apps like Tinder and Bumble, to the detriment of her mental health.
It’s no wonder Drew Barrymore produced How to Be Single through her Flower Flims banner - it’s a film so innocent and pure you’re afraid it may slip and fall into the East River if unsupervised. Director Christian Ditter (who also helmed the underrated Lily Collins vehicle Love, Rosie) and the writers (rom com vets Abby Kohn, Marc Silverstein, and Dana Fox) lean hard into every cliché. Needledrops like Hailee Steinfeld’s “Love Myself” to reemphasize the film’s themes happen on schedule. Certain plotlines - like Alison Brie’s desperation to land a husband being played for laughs - are as cringeworthy and outdated as rereading my undergraduate thesis. And yet, I have spent the years since 2016 trying to disentangle why I find those very tropes so comforting in the context of Single.
How to Be Single feels like the death of something - both positive and negative.
Post-#MeToo romances tread more carefully around issues of power dynamics and dating etiquette - for the better. Today, characters like Anders Holm’s womanizing Tom (who has the water shut off to his apartment so his one-night-stands won’t be tempted to stay the full night) would be treated as borderline-criminal abusers rather than landmines in the world of dating. Similarly, the “drink number” - the maximum amount of drinks two single people of the opposite sex can have before they hook up - should bring up questions of consent when both parties are so inebriated. Not to mention that the fact the film doesn’t have LGBTQ representation is pretty surprising for any film about dating in 2016.
Those valid criticisms notwithstanding, I’m nostalgic for the broad appeal of How to Be Single - from a time when rom coms would attempt to capture the widest audience possible. This applies to the comedy, as Rebel Wilson’s character is a stock character in the “Fat Amy” mold - a chaotic force of nature.
We’re introduced to Wilson’s Robin in a dance club, wearing a neon arrow pointing at her crotch. She is the type of hurricane personality who slides down drain pipes and into strangers’ beds daily. You never believe for one moment that Robin is a character who can exist in the real world. The hint of a backstory (that she’s actually rich, but keeps it a secret from Alice to not affect their friendship) feels tacked-on. There’s no attempt to provide shading via a past trauma - no attempt to deviate from the popular Rebel Wilson persona. Instead, Robin exists as a vessel for comedy writing.
For example, one of the film’s setpieces is a minutes-long gag devoted to Robin’s morning ritual after partying on a weeknight. To the tune of Guns ‘N Roses’ “Welcome to the Jungle,” Alice watches Robin’s hangover cures like Pedialyte and snorting ibuprofen, as well as her styling tips like getting free makeup samples from the counter at Bloomingdale’s. The montage builds to a single punchline. When Alice and Robin finally make it to the office, Robin spins in her chair and declares “Nailed it!” Just then, their boss passes by and sneers “you’re three and a half hours late.” Robin cheers “Yay! Lunchtime!” Robin exists in an airless world with no consequences.
If Rebel Wilson powers the belly laughs of How to Be Single, Dakota Johnson is the film’s tender heart. Dakota Johnson’s comedy chops have been underutilized (See also: The Five Year Engagement, as well as the short-lived sitcom Ben and Kate), but it’s her vulnerability that gives the film its sense of romance.
That’s not to say her character Alice isn’t aspirational - with her color-coordinated wardrobe, her sunlit studio apartment and her otherworldly bangs. Her problem of singledom does not have life-or-death stakes, but Johnson’s wistful narration makes you believe in her character’s loneliness. It helps that Johnson as an actor can inhabit the rom com mousiness as well as the Zen required to say, “that’s not the truth Ellen.” You feel Alice’s pain when she struggles to zip up her dress alone in her apartment. And no matter how radiant she looks in her red coat, you feel the melancholy as she trudges through the snow and Christmas lights by herself after a holiday party.
Alice’s choice of romantic partners suits her character’s searching nature. Although she sleeps with bartender Tom, she has a blossoming relationship with Damon Wayans Jr.’s widower David. It’s rare to see a rom com heroine interacting with a potential partner’s young daughter. Although these scenes are short-lived (and lead to an obvious resolution - an improved relationship between David and his daughter), there are more interesting candidates for Alice’s love than the usual mid-twenties boy toys.
Alison Brie’s Lucy cuts the difference between Alice and Robin. Her character has an inner life, but her relentless pursuit of love is often played for laughs. In order to explain to bartender Tom why she is on so many dating sites, she pours a bowl of peanuts onto the bar counter. She winnows down the eight billion people in New York City to the fraction she considers eligible to date (omitting those who are shorter than her or don’t want kids). However, Lucy’s love interest George (Jason Mantzoukas) only appears when she has a breakdown over the pressures of dating while volunteering as a reader in a children’s book shop. She gets a tidy resolution, married off like a Jane Austen character as she always aspired to be. However, she serves as a (significantly less nuanced) reminder of the ability of single life to drive someone to extremes.
The fact that How to Be Single is willing to take its characters’ issues with loneliness seriously is a sign of the film itself willing to be vulnerable.
The emotions are as retro as the broad comedy. Modern films are so afraid of cliché, or sentimentality (and of getting screenshotted and dragged on Twitter), that they don’t bother getting to the squishy emotions. Where are the Cameron Crowe declarations of love - the Jerry Maguire speeches that may be parodied but feel real in the moment? For evidence of this, look no further than the top film at the box office the week of How to Be Single’s release - Deadpool, the first superhero film built on snark.
Moreover, often the film’s clichés often stumble on truisms. Dakota Johnson’s journey has her embracing her status as a single woman. She decides to become a more fulfilled individual by achieving her lifelong dream of hiking the Grand Canyon (cue the training montage of her on a stairmaster). She even invents a contraption to zip her dress up by herself (the film’s real fist-pump moment). The idea that Alice has to “discover” herself before she meets her counterpart is not a revolutionary idea. However, it is a message of empowerment - rare in the age of Hallmark rom coms recycling old plot threads in the hopes of engineering a spark.
Every year, there is another news story about the “return” of the romantic comedy. However, that “return” is usually either some combination of classic stars reteamed (George Clooney and Julia Roberts in Ticket to Paradise), an action film with a rom com element (Sandra Bullock in The Lost City) or a Netflix original that is shockingly above-average. The studio romantic comedy as it existed in the 2000s - a vibrant landscape of new faces and old all looking for love - is over.
Dakota Johnson appears to have been the last of the studio rom com ingénues. Now the pipeline for rising actors to lead romantic comedies is fully broken. New movie stars like Tom Holland are more likely to secure a second film franchise than star in a rom com as a career move. Even the stars of the successful 2018 Netflix rom com Set It Up, Zoey Deutch and Glen Powell, have yet to return to the genre. In a way, I understand why. Romantic comedies often leave their stars exposed, requiring them to use new muscles (like their tear ducts).
However, when our modern stars decline to participate in rom coms, it just stigmatizes sentimentality.
Romantic comedies allow us to experience longing from a distance. When we never see Tom Holland pine for an onscreen partner, it makes the feeling of being in love that much more foreign to the audience. How to Be Single may not be a perfect film, but it understands the importance of sharing emotions - both the pleasure of companionship and the agony of loneliness. It also validates those emotions rather than treating them flippantly.
A big debate in my friend group revolves around the ending of the film, when Dakota Johnson ascends to the top of the Grand Canyon at dawn.
She delivers this narration:
“The thing about being single is, you should cherish it. Because, in a week, or a lifetime, of being alone, you may only get one moment. One moment, when you're not tied up in a relationship with anyone. A parent, a pet, a sibling, a friend. One moment, when you stand on your own. Really, truly single. And then... It's gone..”
Some of my friends believe that when Dakota Johnson looks over her shoulder to smile, she is gazing upon her newest partner. I always believed, from the time of my own singledom when I saw this film, that she was considering the potential of a future partner - “the idea of someone else” as Meg Ryan calls it in You’ve Got Mail.
How to Be Single is a film with power in its broad strokes. I think about it as a rom com that was willing to be saccharine to impart real lessons, that sneaks up on you with how deeply you feel it. A romantic comedy that’s even open to interpretation…
Is How to Be Single the last rom com? Maybe it wasn’t after all. Maybe it was just the last one to make me feel something real.