In order to survive a summer of wedding fever, longtime single friends, Ben and Alice, agree to be each other’s plus one at every wedding they’ve been invited to.
The one thing all romantic comedies have in common is their plot. A guy and a girl meet, fall in love, things get complicated, they break up, they try to move on separately, realize they were meant to be together, and finally work everything out before the end of the film. Granted, there are many different narratives floating around out there; “Sleepless in Seattle,” “Pretty Woman,” “Hitch,” “There’s Something About Mary,” “Annie Hall,” “Titanic,” well scratch that last one, Jack would have survived and they could have lived happily ever after if Rose had just moved over enough to let him float on the door with her, but you get the point, no matter how the story is told, they all follow an established pattern no matter when or where they take place.
In “Plus One,” Ben (Jack Quaid) and Alice (Maya Erskine) have been best friends for over ten years, ever since they graduated college together. They’ve both been in relationships with other people and broke up with them and when we are first introduced to them, they are spending their entire summer as guests at many of their friends’ weddings. Afterward, they try to hook each other up with someone they think they will like but it never pans out. Eventually, they fall for each other, realizing that true love had been staring them in the face all these years, have an amazing honeymoon period, and then things get awkward as Ben begins to overthink everything, wondering if he made the right choice, and screws everything up between them. They go to different weddings by themselves, comprehend that their lives are not the same without each other, and indubitably, reconcile as the final credits roll.
Everything is in there that I mentioned earlier and while it may sound like a bad critique, it really isn’t. If you don’t go by the name of Ebenezer Scrooge, chances are that most romantic comedies will find a way into your heart and “Plus One” is no different. Alice is a little rough around the edges, prone to getting drunk and swearing like a sailor while Jack likes to think of himself as a good person, even though his main objective for attending these weddings is to sleep with as many women as he can. You can see the finale coming a mile away but as is the case with most other movies, and in real life too, the journey is what’s most important, and Ben and Alice realize that what they thought they wanted, is nothing like what they end up with.
Jack Quaid, whose parents are Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid, proves that while his last name might have gotten him a few jobs early on, can stand on his own two feet and has natural magnetism and both he and Maya Erskine share believable onscreen chemistry, and in a story of this ilk, that is the difference between success or failure. “Plus One” will not go down in history as a game-changer but it will keep you entertained for an hour and 40 minutes.
Available on Blu-ray & DVD August 6th
