Band Aid (2017)

Ben & Anna are a millennial couple if ever there was one. They live in a decent California neighborhood (despite their jobs being freelance graphic artist and Uber driver respectively), they go to therapy, they spend a lot of their time baked, and they argue about everything except the one real thing they need to talk about. While high at a child's birthday, they improvise a song on the spot, which gives them the idea to turn their fights into songs.

Turning fights into songs as therapy is a pretty great premise for a movie. But having that be just about 20% of the movie feels like a bad choice. There's a lot of time spent with next-door neighbor Armisen who has two gorgeous women -- his "best friends" -- at his house all the time (though he can't understand why anyone would be interested in them), wears a leather jumpsuit as pajamas, has Cocoa Tuesdays with his houseguests, and used to be in a one-man band that was reviewed as "really very weird." Why do I know all of this about a secondary character? My guess is that they let Armisen riff and thought everything he did & said was far funnier than it really is (the Armisen trap fallen into by so many creatives).

Anyway. This couple really shouldn't make it. Ben is a man-child who doesn't seem to really want to put in the work to be a good husband. Or to hold a job. Or to even clean his own dishes. Anna deserves better. Randomly, however, Ryan Miller -- lead singer of Guster, one of my favorite bands --shows up in a drum circle. Why? No idea. But spotting him was about the only time I was happy during this whole movie.

D+