ROMANTIC COMEDY; 1hr 28min
STARRING: Simon Pegg, Lake Bell
Blind love: Pegg and Bell
Toot sweet, Man Up makes you either pathetically grateful for yours or determined never to re/enter the dating scene. There sits 34-year-old Nancy (Bell), alone in a hotel room, (rightly) dreading the set-up guy who awaits her downstairs at a (themed) party. Nancy is a burger-and-chips girl with an on-target bs meter and a list of life plans (learn French, cook more…) that she’s unlikely to tick off. But life, as John Lennon memorably noted, is what happens to you, et cetera. As it duly does to Nancy when, after a far-fetched identity mix-up, she’s bowled over by a blind date (Paul’s Pegg as Jack) she was never supposed to meet and finds herself posing as 24-year-old triathlete, Jessica.
We’re talking potential eye-roll territory until The Inbetweeners director Ben Palmer’s too-cute intro casts off into more vinegary waters without missing a spiky beat of sexual politicising. The fact that Jack and Nancy are all kinds of right together doesn’t mean that getting there will be simple, duh. And as the two defensive softies muddle through, we get to hang out with the mercurial Pegg and Bell, sparking like mad through every cockamamie hiccup.
