New screenwriters are often told “know your genre” or “brand yourself by sticking to a genre.” Netflix’s current No. 1 film The Lovebirds is a great study in throwing the rules out the window; it effortlessly blends romantic comedy, broad comedy, murder mystery, and crime into one tightly wound adventure thrill ride. While an audience could easily predict the ending to the love story, guessing the journey to get there is damn near impossible — and that’s what makes it great. It feels like a refreshing take on genre tropes because it mixes so many of them.

The crafting of The Lovebirds is credited to three guys with vastly different writing experiences: Aaron Abrams (perhaps best known as an actor from Canadian comedy Slings and Arrows) and Brendan Gall (who wrote on crime drama Blindspot) share screenplay credit. Meanwhile, the pair share story credit with Blindspot creator Martin Gero. The combination of their three brains is certainly unique. 

The trio undoubtedly found success with this script through crafting characters with excellent chemistry, sexual tension, and irreconcilable differences. Issa Rae and Kumail Nanjiani play longtime lovers Leilani and Jibran. The friendship still works well, but somewhere along the way in the mundanity of everyday life and work, it seems they’ve forgotten how to be lovers. 

We get Jibran and Leilani’s post-meet-cute intro right at the top of the script, thrusting us into why they click immediately. The lovely rom-com trope where the pair first identify each other’s I-wanna-kiss-you faces has a great final payoff. Flash forward three years and the two are in a petty fight about whether or not they’d make good contestants on The Amazing Race. The fight leads to a decision to break up but the moment they agree moving on is the right thing to do they hit a cyclist with their car, giving us an inciting incident fit for the best of crime dramas. 

The cyclist comedically rides away relatively unscathed and we think our heroes are off the hook, but crime drama structure continues as a man who claims to be a cop hops into their car and pursues the cyclist in a high-speed chase, only to run over him until he is most assuredly dead. The cop then disappears almost as quickly as he entered the picture, leaving our heroes distraught at the dead body in front of them. They are then called into the cops by an insufferable white couple who look like they just stepped out of a disco brunch, adding a twinge of Jordan Peele-style comedic commentary on racism in America. 

Wackiness ensues while Leilani and Jibran face deeper consequences with worse implications and their novice desire to solve the crime usually lands them in hotter water. What continues to anchor the story is the back and forth on whether or not these two are perfect for each other, or if they might just get each other killed. Relationship troubles continuously bubble to the surface as Leilani and Jibran try to solve a mystery that could clear their names. Rae and Nanjiani are so good at their characters’ quirky banter that they feel like a couple from real life whose idiosyncratic connection is both loathsome and something to be celebrated. Their relationship woes are also a constant reminder that The Lovebirds is a rom-com wrapped in a crime-action-comedy sandwich.

Genre bending is always a risky venture that takes some deft maneuvering by the writer — writers don’t want to end up with a kitchen-sink script that has so much thrown in you can no longer tell what it is. That said, if the risk pays off, tried and true genres often have a new shimmer for Hollywood execs looking to purchase something that feels different. A great tip for the writer that wants to attempt mixing genres is to know the predominant genre of the piece. In The Lovebirds, romance, crime and comedy rise to the top. Don’t let too many genres compete with each other; try to max out at two taking predominance. Clearly, genre melding worked out great for The Lovebirds writers as the film is getting compared to everything from True Romance to Game Night. Screenwriting risks often do reap rewards.