Bland Date
Nancy (Lake Bell) has not had much desire to date since her last relationship failed despite her sister Elaine (Sharon Horgan) constantly trying to push her in to dating again. But an encounter with a woman on a train heading for a blind date leads to an unexpected chain of events as Nancy ends up being mistaken for the woman and going on a blind date with Jack (Simon Pegg) who is in the final stages of getting divorced. It leads to an even stranger night as they end up drinking, bowling and running in to Sean (Rory Kinnear) who has been obsessed with Nancy ever since they were at the same school. But of course eventually Nancy has to come clean and tell Jack she wasn't his blind date, the question is what happens next?
I am not sure but I reckon I may have seen the storyline from "Man Up" before in a made for TV romantic comedy, if not the story of confusion and romance is right out of the Hallmark rom-com playbook. And whilst the storyline is pretty obvious from having alcohol fuelled fun to antagonising Jack's ex when they run in to her as well as some obsessive comedy thanks to Sean and his crush there is something simply enjoyable about the storyline.
But here is the thing; I didn't enjoy "Man Up" and there is a simple reason. Both Nancy and Jack are ridiculously annoying characters with that sense that they don't really talk to each other but talk at each other because what they say is so important. It isn't that they are pretentious but they are the sort of people you just know that when your back is turned they would be poking fun at you because they don't think. In truth the most engaging and entertaining character in the movie is Sean and you can see that Rory Kinnear was having a lot of fun playing him with several scenes looking like he is on the verge of cracking up.
What this all boils down to is that "Man Up" ended up a disappointment for the simple reason that the characters just didn't work and ended up being more annoying than entertaining.
