Instigating incidents are vitally important for a story. So when budding writer Omar (Waddell) no-shows an all-important makeup date with his longtime girlfriend, Diane (Webber) because he gets a once-in-a-lifetime career break, rom-com lore demands it should be the defining moment that breaks them but will eventually bring them back together. Instead, in awkwardly unappealing rom-com Why Men Are Clueless, it’s immediate proof that they shouldn’t be together. And if they shouldn’t be together, why bother trudging through two hours of tedium?
Trying and failing to emulate cringe-inducing relationship comedies like What Women Want, Think Like a Man, and Chris Rock’s misguided remake of Éric Rohmer’s Love in the Afternoon, I Think I Love My Wife, Omar finds himself in the lesson-learning situation of being offered his dream job – but only if he can convince the editor that he understands what makes women tick. Unfortunately, Omar’s only resources for reference are his couch buddies: failed actor Justin (Brady), hapless leech Brian (Wooten), and wannabe tough guy C-Illa (Harris), who only appears gangsta by comparison to Omar and his worthless buddies but carries a taste for high culture that occasionally adds to the film’s dry humor.
Maybe Why Men Are Clueless might have been better, or at least more watchable, if writer/director Waddell had tightened his focus onto that couch. Those scenes, where the four guys just expose their own incompetence in relationship matters, evoke a slightly less caustic early David Mamet, as the quartet skates so close to something like understanding. The highlight may be in their hapless attempts to debunk an online guide about what women need to know about men, which plays like Neil LaBute scripting an episode of Friends. That edge between emotional incompetence and modern macho hubris is where Waddell finds something interesting to say, but it’s too often buried under barely competent filmmaking (please, filmmakers, I am begging you, do not scrimp on your sound mix), stilted performances, and some horribly outdated gags and clumsy stereotypes, all further undermining a rom-com that is rarely romantic nor that comedic.
This article appears in January 5 • 2024.
