I Give it a Year Review
By Kayla Ferguson

Marriage these days is fleeting, unpredictable and hardly sacred like it used to be. So why not make a crude, quasi-romantic movie about it?

I Give it a Year, directed by Dan Mazer and slated to hit theaters February 8, 2013, is a laugh-out-loud romantic comedy that downplays and makes humorous everything that is awful about marriage. It’s no secret that marriage isn’t all it’s cracked up to be and this film ensures that everyone watching understands that, making all the single people out there slightly less anxious about their supposed relationship ineptitude and all the married people a little bit uncomfortable at the thought of their daily annoyances related to their spouse.

Nat (Rose Byrne) and Josh (Rafe Spall) alongside Chloe (Annie Faris) and Guy (Simon Baker) are able to perfectly depict how sometimes the idea of the perfect person doesn’t necessarily equate to the perfect relationship. Of course the cliché sappy love story still exists—that’s why Nat and Josh get married in the first place. But nine short months after their wedding that all their friends secretly thought was a bad idea in the first place, they are far from the perpetually misunderstood blissful honeymoon of the first year of marriage.

It’s hardly surprising when Nat begins to fall for Guy, a very rich and successful client of hers. He is a far cry from the struggling writer of a husband she has become resentful of and the sparks that fly between them are more obvious than fireworks on the fourth of July. Simultaneously Josh begins to realize that maybe he shouldn’t have broken up with his ex-girlfriend Chloe afterall. Of course, neither one wants to be the one to give up on a marriage and they agree to fight for something that both wished would have ended months ago.

Although the general storyline may sound slightly dramatic, it’s not. Nearly every scene offers absurd, relatable and sometime jaw-dropping comedy that makes every audience member root for their breakup, not out of contempt of the characters but out of a genuine understanding that bad relationships suck. Of course, the hopes of the audience comes true at the end, when Josh politely asks Nat to divorce him and she says yes, telling him he has made her “the happiest girl in the world.” It’s funny, in an unpredictably predictable way.

Comic in it’s absurdity, I Give it a Year politely (read “humorously) suggests that maybe marriage isn’t everything the world always thinks it’s going to be—and there is nothing wrong with that. One can only imagine that quite a few people left the theater reevaluating their relationship and maybe secretly wishing they could be Nat or Josh for a day, or maybe a lifetime.

But don’t be fooled into thinking this movie stops at the respectable line of intelligent comedy. A movie of this type could not be made humorous without ample crude humor—the signature “penis shot” that has become somewhat of an expectation in R-rated comedies these days as well as ample profanity and politically incorrect jokes told by “that white guy” target the movie towards a niche market. And it’s probably not the fifty-year married couple that would watch the screen in angst at everything they didn’t do to change their marriage when they were younger but instead liberal 20-somethings that can authentically appreciate the idea of divorce. If this sounds like you, than what better movie to check out for Valentine’s Day 2013?