Every single person has reached what they consider is the bottom of the dating pool, and wanted to give up. When you do reach that point, you feel like a relationship is just not in your future (for the record as a single guy, I have never experienced this). Luckily you have your friends and family telling you not to worry, all is not lost, the right one will come around, or it will happen when you least expect it, you know the standard message. What if though, it really did happen like that, or maybe it just happens when you pretend to be someone else.
Nancy (Lake Bell) is a single thirty-four year old woman, and obviously I was talking about her in the above paragraph. It seems Nancy is having a hard time finding Mr. Right and it is really souring her mood, but things are looking up. Nancy has made a list that she checks when she needs motivation to find that special someone. While on a train to her parents, she meets a girl, who is on the way to a blind date, with a book as the item that will make her known to her suitor. That book ends up in Nancy’s hands where she is mistaken by Jack (Simon Pegg) to be his blind date and well Nancy decides to go with it. Jack and Nancy have a great time, but things start to turn when Nancy finally decides to man’s up (see what I did there?) and tells Jack who she really is, and that is when the fun really begins.
As someone who enjoys the genre that is the romantic comedy, it can be hard to have to sit through so many weeds to get to that rose. While the template is not broken, too often filmmakers don’t take a chance to be original, or just good. Writter Tess Morris used some inspiration and a story she had heard as inspiration for “Man Up”, and it just works. With a good set-up already in play, all you needed was the perfect actors and with Bell and Pegg, they found that and more. The film’s story and characters just work, especially an ex-stalker of Nancy’s played by Rory Kinnear. There is a formula for just this type of movie and by Morris’s own account she follows it. While that doesn’t sound promising, it comes together brilliantly, because in my opinion it comes from somewhere personal. “Man Up” is funny and one of those feel good movies, that breaks out of the mold and makes you glad that someone finally manned up and make a good movie for us Rom- Com lovers out there.
