'Rye Lane' fails to elevate the familiar
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A certain kind of romantic will fall for nearly any chemistry-driven walk-and-talk movie. I consider myself part of this group. “Before Sunrise” is an all-time favorite, “Southside with You” remains underappreciated, and the aforementioned soft spot is enough that even a movie like “Before We Go” (starring Chris Evans and Alice Eve) can transform generic to fetching.
The widely praised “Rye Lane,” though, is too sure of its own cuteness, nullifying the effect.
The setup is sort of like “Before Sunrise” meets the disappointing Charlie Day/Jenny Slate vehicle “I Want You Back”: Both coming off of breakups, Dom (David Jonsson) and Yas (Vivian Oparah) meet and decide to spend a day walking around a South London neighborhood while also figuring out how to handle lingering feelings about their exes. Meanwhile, writers Nathan Bryon and Tom Melia lazily aim for built-in fondness from ‘90s staples like “Shoop” and A Tribe Called Quest’s “The Low End Theory,” a universally beloved album that also speaks to the movie’s disappointing judgmental streak toward characters with different opinions than Dom and Yas. (It feels like Rob Gordon’s philosophy about people being defined by their taste if “High Fidelity” never called out the character for being foolish.)
Worse, each semi-comic episode that Dom and Yas experience feels cheap and obvious, with the stories of their exes lacking even the slightest hint of freshness and director Raine Allen-Miller’s overactive visual style preventing any intimacy to come through. By the time the writers lean on stale notes about growing up and professional insecurity and then misunderstand their own supposedly sweet means of Yas’ characterizing the two types of people in the world, the leads’ charm barely matters.
Light on tension and barely even making it to 77 minutes, “Rye Lane” simultaneously looks down its nose at people that are basic while thinking it’s being insightful by laughing at pretentious artists as if that isn’t one of the world’s easiest targets. Yas actually says that Tabby is a stupid name, though not for a cat, and this is the hilarious and romantic movie people are raving about?
Yeah, the filmmaking shows potential, but the feeling never arrives — only the false suggestion that it’s been there the whole time.
C
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