Flip through the latest issue of Gulf Weekly.
The premise? There’s a wedding taking place and the male and female pals of the bride and groom throw simultaneous parties in their honour. The setting? Vegas, the world’s most glamorous city and the go-to location for the ultimate pre-nuptial shindigs.
If you feel like you’ve seen this movie before, it’s because you almost certainly have. Multiple times, in fact. This offering brings nothing new to the genre and frankly, it’s woeful.
It’s wonderfully ironic that the director’s surname is Story, as such a thing is almost entirely lacking in this movie. It’s typical rom-com fare; a gang of young adult couples hit the Strip for a weekend of organised debauchery for the wedding of Candace (Hall) and Michael (Terrence J), with the boys and girls separating and throwing bachelor and bachelorette parties respectively the night before.
What follows is a puerile battle of the sexes, where the two groups attempt to outdo each other with their antics.
This chiefly involved typical bar behaviour plus drinking from goldfish bowls while doing a handstand and making elephant noises (not actually shown on screen, but with this strain of plot development, you wouldn’t be surprised), followed by, yeah … you get the idea.
Of course, this type of movie wouldn’t be complete without a whole host of problems providing a backdrop to the on-screen events.
The groom is a mummy’s boy and the bride is struggling to cope with his lack of independence? Check.
One of the boys has an ugly past and his new beau can’t avoid bringing it up every five seconds? Yep.
One of the girls gets a once-in-a-lifetime job offer for a major company and has to choose between career or partner? Of course!
Oh, and don’t forget the broody bridesmaid whose boyfriend isn’t interested yet. Yawn.
Seriously, if a marriage counsellor was to write down the five most common reasons for client visits, it’s a fair shout that this film covers them all. It’s probably the funniest part, nay, the only funny part of the movie, and it isn’t even intentional.
I found myself giggling at not only the complete unoriginality, but how horribly forced the exposition was. As the clumsy script reeled off cliché after cliché, it almost depressed me when I realised that the only time I laughed during the film was at, not with it.
Such predictable problems inevitably have predictable resolutions. There’s nothing fresh brought to the table and there’s no incentive to recommend this movie to your worst enemy, never mind a friend.
After The Hangover (superb), Last Vegas (decent) and another 10 identical rip-offs designed to cash-in on the huge and unexpected success of the former, the bottom of the barrel has been well and truly scraped. They’ll probably hit magma soon.
The ensemble cast never gets time to breathe; there are just far too many characters that the scriptwriter appears contractually obliged to give equal time to. We don’t get any time to sympathise with them or even care to invest in their superficial first world problems.
The dire dialogue doesn’t help much either. For example, one bland character (let’s call her Unhappy Girlfriend #2, she’s probably called that in the credits anyway) spends half the movie complaining that her boyfriend doesn’t expend the weekly income of Dubai on her. Apparently I’m expected to want a happy resolution for her. Sorry love, no can do, but how about a stubbed toe?
If there’s one tiny crumb of positivity to salvage from this movie experience, it’s Kevin Hart’s character Cedric who finds himself thrust into the best man role and is the sole actor who seems to have been given some free reign to be himself.
He cracks the only few lines containing any form of wit, and if standing out in this cesspit of a movie is anything to go by, his recent emergence into superstardom appears warranted.
Think Like A Man Too will unfortunately have to go down as one of the worst movies I’ve ever seen.
Note to Hollywood: please no more movies based on bachelor parties in Las Vegas. The endless string of clichés, superficial plot points and bland characters means this should be avoided at all costs.
The only result you’ll get from seeing this movie is detached corneas from rolling your eyes so much.
* Showing in Cineco, Seef I, Seef II
