What If

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Michael Dowse/Starring: Daniel Radcliffe, Zoe Kazan, Megan Park, Adam Driver and Rafe Spall

Based on a play by T.J. Dawe called Toothpaste and Cigars, director Michael Dowse gives us What If, a romantic comedy featuring a young cast (there's scarcely anyone over thirty in the film) and two leads with a stockpile of quirky charm.

It shouldn't be difficult for a director or screenwriter to pen a romantic comedy these days. If a writer demands a clean break from the genre's monolithic nature, all he or she need do is sample the offerings from Hollywood and the independent realm from the past two decades then proceed to uncharted and unexplored territories. Sounds like a logical approach, right? Unfortunately for What If, it staggers out of the starting gate with the typical meet-cute stuff then has the Sisyphean task of trying to recover. What could have been a charming and offbeat story becomes a museum tour of romantic-comedy cliches and character archetypes. If one were to make a checklist of the hackneyed elements of the genre, What If could facilitate the task quite nicely.

As a young man named Wallace (Daniel Radcliffe), recovers from a break-up, he meets a young woman named Chantry (Zoe Kazan) at a party while arranging the word magnets on a refrigerator. They share a conversation that is too pat for patter then meet again in the street after the party. Wallace and Chantry walk to her front steps. Wallace expects a romantic gesture on her part only to learn she has a boyfriend waiting for her inside. The crestfallen young man agrees to be her friend and after some chance encounters, the friendship deepens.

At this point, all the familiar elements of the romantic comedy have been trotted out. One being the colorful best friend to the hero, who is obnoxious but confident with women. Said friend is either teasing the hero for his lack of romantic success or urging him on. In this case, the friend, Allan (Adam Driver), manages to hook up with a woman at the party where Wallace meets Chantry.

If the hero must have the jerky best friend, the heroine must have her version, or for this film's purposes, a sister as the off-beat friend who also serves as counsel and the voice of reason. This part would normally be played by Judy Greer in most films of this ilk but here it is Megan Park as Dalia; a young woman with romantic adversity of her own.

And we must have the hero sit on the roof of his sister's house, staring wistfully at the city lights, which for this film, is Toronto. Why romantic comedies always have to feature city-skylines is beyond me. Can't romance germinate in rural areas?

So you have most of the elements of the romantic comedy save for the comedy, which is typically absent--but that too is another indispensable trait of the genre.

I don't think I need to say much more about the plot, which is boy meets girl, boy pines for girl, girl begins to think of boy as lover material, girl and incumbent boyfriend's relationship begins to show signs of strain, etc. You can extrapolate the rest.

I can say a few positive things about the film. Zoe Kazan and Daniel Radcliffe are not the most obvious casting choices but if credit can be given for making the movie watchable, it's the two actors'. Both have the ability to make the material and situations seem fresh but they are ultimately defeated by the rules and conventions of the genre. If only the actors had had better, wittier dialogue rather than diner conversations about the fecal content of Elvis' bowels (I won't explain; you'd have to see the movie), it might have been a joyful romp. If I may beat the romantic-comedy cliche horse some more, the chatter that makes up the first half hour of the film is irritating and exhausting but most directors and writers feel it necessary to have conversational noise-pollution.

If the ending is a given, then why does everything else about the movie have to be too? Why not give us something different; people we haven't seen and dialogue unheard before? Was the play this lackluster?

It's the middle of August now and for cinephiles like myself, it means dreary, Summer movie-spectacles are receding into the background while the promise of better movie fare awaits us in the Fall and Winter. To be fair, I did see a few gems in June and July, but they may seem better than they are, given the low ambitions of their competitors.

Seeing the juicy, highly seductive coming attractions for the Fall made me impatient and induced momentary amnesia, as in "wait a minute, what did I come to see today? Oh, yeah, it's What If." The movie will slowly fade from screens, find its way to cable, then fall into the great maw of oblivion.
Is it Fall yet?