“It’s ‘When Harry Met Sally’ for assholes,” says “Sleeping with Other People” writer/director Leslye Headland during a Q&A after the film’s Sundance premiere. This is partially accurate. And the comparison is mandatory as Jake (Jason Sudeikis) and Lainey (Alison Brie) develop a sexless friendship even though it’s very clear, to us and to them, that their feelings for each other are hardly platonic.
But Headland’s follow-up to the vastly underrated “Bachelorette” isn’t a romantic comedy retread. It’s the best of its kind since “Friends with Benefits,” funny and sexy and only conventional in the sense that it takes a formula and gives it energy and relevance again. Jake and Lainey lost their virginity to each other in college, but more than a decade later they’ve become regular cheaters. Says Jake, it’s not that he doesn’t want to commit, it’s that he doesn’t want to commit to any of the women he’s with, and it’s easier to say he slept with their sister than to actually do the mature thing and break up peacefully. Even if Headland can’t quite convince that Jake and Lainey think it’s better off for them to be just friends, the movie is so sharply written and flawlessly cast—these are the exact sort of starring roles Sudeikis and Brie should be getting—that I both laughed my ass off and got choked up.
Scenes like Jake teaching Lainey about masturbation don’t feel like raunchy bits designed for startled giggles but like amusing, character-driven examples of temptation peeking out. And unlike most comedies, “Sleeping” doesn’t stop being funny in its final act, at times feeling like an edgy, modernized update of old-fashioned banter. It thinks about characters of both genders and allows for complicated feelings about sex. It also features a hysterical, odd supporting turn from Adam Scott.
This isn’t the first movie to show the value of friendship as a foundation for relationships. But “Sleeping with Other People” finds a fresh, hugely entertaining way to look at a number of imperfect, sexual, potentially compatible people and consider what they could and should do to, with and for each other.
Originally published during the 2015 Sundance Film Festival
3.5 stars (out of four)
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