Chéri (2009)

After months of nonstop excitement, the moment is finally here. I finally get to talk about The Lovebirds. I’m not saying this ironically. I have been dying for this movie to come out, along with My Spy. Why these films in particular? Because something awakened in me when I saw last year’s Stuber. I sat by myself in a nearly abandoned movie theater and got to enjoy a movie that wasn’t a remake or reboot, wasn’t a 2.5 hour blockbuster, wasn’t a safe approach Disney film, and as much as I love them, wasn’t a superhero film. It was something fresh, as fresh as a buddy comedy can be. I love Kumail Nanjiani, and likewise, I love Dave Bautista.

Stuber was…OK, but over time, I’ve sort of grown to love it, and it was a much-needed change of pace, as I said. So yes, Bautista’s My Spy and Nanjiani’s My Spy showed promising signs of originality, even if they aren’t stellar masterpieces. I want to relive the terrifying lows and the dizzying highs that Stuber gave me. With the COVID-19 outbreak, both movies escaped my hungry clutches by a few weeks, and I was furious. But The Lovebirds found its way to Netflix today, and My Spy is set to be released on Amazon sometime.

So, in my determination to support a bit of originality, I went out of my way to claim The Lovebirds for myself, using my position as head editor of Incluvie to ensure I would be the first critic on the team talking about the film. I told my poor beleaguered fellow writers, hungry for new releases, that The Lovebirds was mine, and mine alone. I even threatened to assign them to review painfully bad movies like Garbage Pail Kids if they so much as glanced at The Lovebirds with a critical lens. Is this abuse of power?

Yes.