I'm Not in Love

Here's the thing about rom-coms. You really need to think out of the box, make something creative to stand out. "I'm not in Love" fails to do that. The one liners fell flat, the chemistry between Rob and his friends fell flat, some scenes felt like watching a theater play.

The love story looked forced. The stand out performer was Cristina Cataline. She did a fine job but that's about it. There's nothing new in the movie, you've seen everything before.

Positive reviews are all single use accounts whose only activity in IMDB is to positively and gushingly rate/review this absolutely terrible, atrociously paced nonsense. And this is British? The Brits have the greatest actors in the world. Did they have to scour the gutter somewhere to find the only dozen brits who can't act at all?

Second, this is pitched as an anti-rom-com, and specifically as more realistic. Uhm, 40 year old never married women don't get married to men their age, they have to marry 60 year olds. Like it or not, that is the data. This guy, and any 40 year old employed guy, is going to be dating/marrying someone in their late 20's early 30s. He is going to have them chasing him in droves.

This film offers something that I haven't seen in a long time - an honest invitation to journey with a character who, despite his flaws, is trying to make sense of what love is. It's funny that we really don't see many films like this - in attempts to generalize and gloss over it, or wishing for a sugar sweet finish, we can use romantic comedy as a way to escape our own questions, or fantasize our own better endings. This film invites us to look at ourselves, and uses humour and pathos to get there. At times uncomfortable, at times laughable, the characters bring us up close with difficult conversations about relationship, expectation and love. As a viewer, I found it an honest film - and that honesty, as well as the performances of the actors themselves, felt like an important gift that that brings the audience into maturity and honours a film tradition that demands engagement out of a friendship, or at least a kind of kinship, with its viewer.

A romantic comedy in the vein of He's Just Not That Into You and When Harry Met Sally but totally unique, I'm Not In Love brings in a different perspective which allows you to delve into the male psyche. How privileged are we to get a rare glimpse, to look at things from a man's point of view , not just the main character who is surprisingly sympathetic, but his friends each one representing a different type of man at a different life stage for things and people are not just black and white. The women aren't left out either. But more than just a romantic comedy, this film which sped by which is always a good sign shows the little things that make up our everyday life. The link to the childhood effect on how men and women live their adult relationships is often overlooked and it was unusual and refreshing to see this handled here in a lighthearted but effective way. It also brings out things that everyone experiences of the banalities andmundanities of true love when or if we even find it that people often don't talk about.. It touches on the challenges men and women face every day and what it means to be human.. The movie was over before I knew it even though I rewatched bits of it. Loved it.

British film-making at its best... a world away from hackneyed Hollywood rom coms with saccharine plots and predictable endings.

This charmingly wry film captures what it can really be like to be a man in relationship - with the complexities, contradictions and messy nuances.

Fabulous performances from Al Weaver and the cast - under the deft direction of Col Spector.

A thoroughly enjoyable watch.