Sleeping With Other People review: Jason Sudeikis and Alison Brie lead this romantic comedy that first debuted at Sundance in January 2015.
Sleeping With Other People review
Sleeping With Other People review by Sacha Hall.
It’s a familiar premise; can men and women be just friends without sex complicating things? Harry and Sally argued their points on the topic for 96 minutes. Emma and Adam shagged their concerns away on the topic for 108 minutes in No Strings Attached whilst Dylan and Jamie’s friends with benefits theories dragged on for 109 minutes. Now, in Sleeping With Other People, writer/director Leslye Headland’s outlook on sexual freedom and monogamy sees two likeable assholes who reconnect at a meeting for sex addicts and become instant best friends without benefits/supporter/wingman; sharing their relationship dysfunctions as they meander through New York City.
Lainey (Alison Brie) and Jake’s (Jason Sudeikis) reconnection is as bold as their beginning as 18-year-old college virgins. Pounding on the door of the ‘most boring man alive’, Matthew Sovochek (Adam Scott), Lainey is almost thrown out of the dorm for making a scene about her missed deflowering until Jake comes out of his room and vouches for her. Invited to hide out in his room, their easy conversations soon turn towards sex. Realising they both still retain their v-card, they decide to cash it in with each other on the building’s rooftop.
Sleeping With Other People review
Twelve years later, Jake is an unapologetic self-sabotaging womaniser with a string of women left in his wake whilst Lainey is a ‘love addict’, embroiled in a long-term sexual affair with her married college crush-cum-OB-GYN Sovochek and engaged to best friend Sam (Adam Brody). Predictably, the two meet again during a sex addition meeting, reminisce in their easy banter and ultimately decide to become strictly platonic friends during their one and only ‘date’. Exuding sexual chemistry and close familiarity, the two are often mistaken everywhere they go as ‘the coolest couple’ and even acknowledge this fact with a safe word (‘mousetrap’) when the sexual tension gets too much.
Headland fails to capitalise on this segue, opting instead to steer the film towards familiar conventions in the third act rather than revel audiences with the evident chemistry between Sudeikis and Brie and the unbiased openness in which they discuss their sexual freedom.
There are however, some aspects to the film that merits recommendation such as Sudeikis’ quippy banter with Brie and business partner Xander (Jason Mantzoukas), and Brody’s restaurant meltdown but the best part of Sleeping With Other People actually occurs during its closing credits. Although entertaining throughout the film – one-upping each other with their pre-marital sexploits – Mantzoukas and screen-wife Naomi (Andrea Savage) are bloody hilarious during the credit roll; ad-libbing throughout the side scene as they wait on a side walk for their friends to arrive.
I had high hopes coming into this movie when I caught it at the Tribeca Film Festival on the back of another Sudeikis film, Tumbledown – in which his performance was particularly excellent – but admittedly, I found Sleeping With Other People to be a bit of a disappointment. A ho-hum, rom-com that sticks and ends to familiar tropes. It’s nothing you haven’t seen before nor exceptional enough to recommend it as a must-see. See – yes, must…errrr no.
Sleeping With Other People review by Sacha Hall, April 2015.
Sleeping With Other People opens in UK cinemas on 1st January, 2016.
