I Want You Back feels like a romantic comedy of days of yore while all at once fresh and new. It embraces the trope and universal feeling of not wanting to die alone, but few other rom-com tropes feel predictable or even evident in this screwball and lovable comedy that calls for desperate measures to win back love. 

Peter (Charlie Day) and Emma (Jenny Slate) are heartbroken when the loves of their lives dump them, leaving them blindsided and convinced their own happy endings may never come. In an improbable but sweet meet-cute, the pair find each other on the fire stairway of their shared office building attempting to share a cigarette even though they don’t smoke. When they realize they've both been shunned for new and shinier paramours by their exes, they start hanging out. Their hangouts soon lead to a plan to win back their exes (by some nefarious means indeed). 

Day and Slate’s voices are very clear here. They both get a chance to shine as Day takes on leading man duties and Slate’s effervescent charm works even when playing a little bit of a ditz (who nevertheless has a heart of gold).

Writers Isaac Aptaker and Elizabeth Berger (known for Love, Simon, This is Us, and now How I Met Your Father) loved tailoring the script to the specific comedy voices of their leads and stated they spent significant time re-writing for Day and Slate once the actors signed on. 

The film also has some surprising almost-sex scenes that shouldn’t be spoiled here, but the fresh take on unusual rom-com pairings comes from some interesting inspiration. Aptaker stated that initial inspiration was: “Strangers on a Train and Cruel Intentions… the people in these movies are always hot and super-rich Manhattan types, and we wondered what would the movie look like if these people doing these types of things were people we were friends with.”

 “We wanted to write about people scheming in a sexy cool way," continues Berger, "but also people who looked like us and that we’d want to have a drink with, and who are likely bumbling their way through that and having to try really hard to pull it off.” 

Slate’s Emma calls Day’s Peter out on that fact. When Peter offers to seduce the woman dating Emma’s ex, Emma gently tells Peter he’s the kind of guy that it takes a year or more to fall in love with… He’s a slow burn. The backhanded compliment/insult is accurate, but will also come back to haunt and flatter her later on. 

Berger and Aptaker had the unique challenge of grounding characters that get up to some pretty intense hijinks to win their lovers back. In a needed but also touchy moment, Manny Jacinto’s Logan calls Emma crazy when he learns the motivation behind her volunteering to help his middle school theater production and inserting herself into his new relationship with Peter’s ex. If not handled correctly the scene could’ve gone the wrong way. And, no doubt, if these characters had just gone to therapy maybe there’d be no movie to begin with. 

Berger elaborated on how they approached two people with nefarious motivations: “Something we talked about a lot was making them relatable; more than likable. Of course, Charlie and Jenny are so great at what they do that helped a lot, but we were very conscious of making it clear that these were heartbroken people who lost their way and were trying their best to put themselves back together, but they ultimately have good hearts and viewers will feel that throughout the movie. It’s not a movie about backstabbing or getting revenge. The motivation was always to get them back.”

Either way, the feeling of unmet desire and the perhaps a prescient warning that meddling with fate never works out for the best feels overwhelmingly present as Logan directs his middle schoolers in Little Shop of Horrors. When some middle schoolers come down with pink eye, Emma sits in and steals the show with a heart-rending version of ‘Suddenly Seymour.’ Berger and Aptaker wrote to Alan Menken for permission to use the song, and their letter along with a clip of Slate singing her heart out must’ve won him over as the moment in the film is one of the more memorable. 

Slate’s Emma again steals the show when she hits on the overall theme of the movie. Everyone’s just looking for their person. The person that might just put on the airplane oxygen mask for you before they put on their own. Berger and Aptaker have a lovely way with this metaphor throughout the film, never veering into overly sweet or overly expected tropes of the genre.

Aptaker elaborates: “It was a very conscious choice (not to use too many tropes) and we talked about aspects that are intentionally throwback and high concept that tell the story in an ever so slightly different way than people are expecting, and I’m very happy with that.” 

I Want You Back offers hysterical heartbreak, romantic hijinks, friendship connections, and unexpected life lessons in a fast-paced fun package without a tied-in-a-bow happy ending.

“It’s definitely a movie where everyone is figuring themselves out," Berger states. "The characters go into this movie with a very clear picture of what they think they want for their lives through coupling up with the right person, but when they look inwards at ‘what am I going through?' That puts them in this desperate headspace. I think they learn that if they all do some inner work then maybe I can be ready for my person.” 

So, yes, the moving on still requires the inner work, but Berger and Aptaker’s Emma and Peter will ensure the pain of the work will be accompanied with a side of laughter.

You can watch I Want You Back now on Amazon Prime Video.