'Together' should reconsider its structure
NEON
Give “Together” credit for going for it — if you think real-life partners Alison Brie and Dave Franco starring together means you’re in for an enjoyable Saturday matinee romance, best recalibrate expectations and set your alarm for midnight. Writer-director Michael Shanks is far more invested in the gawkability of the descent than the ideas it’s supposedly connected to.
It’s been a while since Millie (Brie) and Tim (Franco) were on the same page, so clearly moving away from their friends and city community to an isolated nothingness will only make things stronger, right? Shanks zeroes in on basic compromises needed in partnership in a way that’s direct and accessible; job opportunities (they move for Millie’s new teaching position) and personal limitations (Tim, a musician still hoping to make money that way, doesn’t drive) significantly impact their lives, and they can either adapt or not. Except “Together” needs to be about twice as deep and three times as surprising for its trajectory to work.
Millie’s friendship with her colleague Jamie (Damon Herriman) is too predictable, and the effort to create lore around the area is likewise too simple and inevitable. So even when Shanks lets all hell break loose in the third act, it’s hard not to wish that happened in the middle instead, not only to go faster through what we could have anticipated but to offer more about the dangers of couples letting unhappiness linger until they’re just making it harder and harder to separate. Along the way Brie and Franco have a chance to get wild but little chance to replicate the simultaneously terrifying and insightful romantic horror of the Brie-starring, Franco-directed “The Rental.”
That leaves “Together” with a few searing moments and also the feeling that it won’t make anyone actually reflect on their relationship or want to jump into their partner’s arms in terror. For a movie that seems to think it’s doing something nutty, the cumulative effect should be more than a shrug.
C+
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