How to Be Single

The title suggests that How to Be Single offers a refreshing counterpoint to the traditional romantic comedy outlook on love. Maybe you can be happy without a significant other, after all.

Perhaps it’s false advertising, then, when the film falls back on the very notions it aims to dismiss in detailing the relationship travails of a handful of needy New York singles masquerading as strong independent women.

The degree to which they’re seeking male companionship varies between the four, including Alice (Dakota Johnson), a paralegal coming off a break-up with her boyfriend. So she moves in with her older sister, Meg (Leslie Mann), a gynecologist who has delivered plenty of babies and now wants one of her own, leading her to try artificial insemination.

Then there’s Robin (Rebel Wilson), a co-worker who becomes Alice’s best friend and confidant despite her devotion to the party-hearty singles scene, except she has a tendency to drag everyone else down with her. Meanwhile, Lucy (Alison Brie) is a hopeless romantic who wants to get married but has become convinced she’ll never meet the right guy, something she relays to an oblivious bartender (Anders Holm).

The primary characters in the script, adapted by three screenwriters from a novel by Liz Tuccillo (He’s Just Not That Into You), think they’re smart and sophisticated with regard to their insights into contemporary romance, but instead they’re shallow and superficial, which makes it difficult to generate a rooting interest in any of them.

Wilson’s low-brow boorishness feels so forced at times that it seems like it’s from a different movie. And while a gender role-reversal is nice in theory, the focus on the virtues of sisterhood doesn’t allow much room for character development for the guys, who share some of the same insecurities and fears of commitment.

As directed by Christian Ditter (Love Rosie), the result is an uneven mix of broad comedy and more delicate relationship issues. There are some scattered laughs and moments of genuine poignancy along the way, yet they’re lost amid all the meaningless bickering and melodramatic contrivances.

The most persuasive advice in the film is unintentional. If you want to know how to be single, just act like these folks, and nobody will want to be around you.

Rated R, 109 minutes.