Okay, See? Monday Movies Has a Fan. We Have William.

Celeste and Jesse Forever. Rashida Jones and Will McCormack co-wrote this romantic comedy about a couple who like each other too much to end their marriage and move on. It searches for the truth behind the clichés, sometimes finds it, and other times finds the clichés.

At the beginning of the film, Celeste (Jones) and Jesse (famed phallopyxistor Andy Samberg, who slips easily into an emotionally grounded seriocomic acting register) drive their friends crazy by neither breaking up nor staying together. They discuss menus in German accents and inhabit extended inside jokes that are conceptually funny but embarrassing to watch, as if seeing friends reenact an SNL sketch they saw and you didn’t.  The couple hasn’t spent more than a week apart since the 10th grade, but Celeste has been growing up faster than Jesse. “The father of my child will have a car,” she tells a friend. It’s a bit cold, but also realistic; she’s ready for an adult relationship, and ready to admit that her first marriage isn’t one.

I went in expecting to love it, found myself hating it for the first 20 minutes, and gradually settled into genuine fondness.