The Hating Game is that rare beast these days, the rom-com.
They are the films where the formula is the point, where tiny nuances can provide the most satisfying moments but where - if there's one factor that's not quite right, the whole conceit can crumble.
The heyday was the late '80s and early '90s. Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle, Notting Hill, You've Got Mail and a film that The Hating Game conceptually resembles - even if they are miles apart in terms of execution - When Harry Met Sally.
Photo: Rialto
The Hating Game updates the formula by making it quite a bit more direct - it's certainly more libidinous than many of its predecessors - but my sense is that it has so many twists and turns that it wants to get through, it doesn't give us any time to really get to know its central characters.
Who are: attractive young publishing executive Lucy Hutton (Lucy Hale) and attractive young publishing executive Joshua Templeman (Austin Stowell).
They have been forced to share an office - not really an office more like an open plan cage match ring right by the elevators so everyone can see them - because of a merger between highbrow literary publisher Gamin and sports biography specialists Bexleys. Bexley people are macho and dismissive of anything but what sells. The Gamin people do yoga and hope for the best.
Lucy and Josh are both being considered for a big promotion. At last, they can prove whichever one is best. But unfortunately, hormones are starting to get in the way. Lucy has an awkward dream about Josh - which for some reason she starts dropping hints about - and Joshua takes the opportunity to have a pash with Lucy in the lift. Consensual, we are assured, but followed by deep regret on both sides.
What follows is an hour and a half of 'will they won't they will they won't they - ooh they did - will they do it again or won't they'. Meanwhile, the shadow of the job looms over them both.
Are they charming? Hard to tell when what they say to each other can be really quite ugly, even misogynistic at times, but it does travel in both directions. It's supposed to be banter but it can have a nasty undercurrent.
Based on a popular novel by Canberra-based writer Sally Thorne, the film is executive produced by its two leads as a vehicle for them both and the only actor I was really familiar with before this picture was Corbin Bernsen as the boorish head of Bexley and I'd be surprised if he was on set for more than two days.
It's not particularly interesting to look at and the pacing is sitcom level but at least it acknowledges the existence of sex and especially of lust. It does kind of come to life during those scenes. Hale and Stowell are both young, fit and fetching so I don't imagine there was too much angsting to get into character on those days.
But their inner lives are just bundles of clichés looking for a character to find a home in.
Screenwriter Christina Mengert and director Peter Hutchings need to trust us more. With rom-coms we have to fall in love with both characters so that - if you'll pardon the expression - root for them both. And that takes time.
The Hating Game is rated M for sex scenes, sexual references and offensive language and it's playing in mostly mainstream locations all over New Zealand now.
