4X + Y chromosome
Most Romantic Comedies are based on a very specific formula, giving the female lead 80% of the screen time since women make up 80% of the audience (with 12% made up of gay guys, and the remaining 8% made up of guys who dragged their girlfriends to see the new Transformers movie and now it’s this or shoe shopping). While it was a great change of pace that Justin Timberlake got equal screen time, given that he’s good looking with a good body and has a brilliant job and a lot of money and a really cool apartment, asking the audience to empathise with him is a little like asking the guy who just sold you a copy of The Big issue to empathise with the guy who won $159 million dollars but has never really understood love. People who look like Justin Timberlake usually play second fiddle to an over-worked Jennifer Lopez or a neurotic Katie Heigl and are usually played for about 12 minutes by Chris Evans or Ryan Reynolds.
Thinking we’re inside the joke
The screenwriters know we know we’re watching a Romantic Comedy, so in order to avoid the clichés, it mocks them first so that when the clichés show up, we sit there thinking ‘oh, it’s so funny, it’s like a movie’. It is a movie, you tool! You can’t make fun of the conventions and then apply them and think you’re being cool and self-referential. You’re actually just cheating the audience of an original idea.
The poster is very rude
Look what they’re doing with their hands! That is so inappropriate on the side of a bus.
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