Acting out feelings

Rating: Null/10 (21 May 2012)

This had potential, after the best of the Apatow cycle. It has wide appeal, charting relationships and sexual conundrums from the ages of 13 and being caught giving yourself a handjob under the covers to being 50 and getting a divorce. Each level is anchored by a charismatic performer who stops somewhat in advance of being a parody of their age, and has some chemistry with the others. The whole thing is nicely packaged as mature humor.
Now Apatow's solution to comedy of the previous generation, is that as soon as we had settled down and been prepared to laugh with a predicament, hues were quickly sketched that revealed human beings in actual pain; the rest of it was drama that was resolved in as much organic ways as the specific world allowed. So far as structure goes, it was usually a light scaffold in the back, say routines of a stand-up comedian dying from cancer or writing a puppet musical about Dracula while heartbroken in Hawaii. It was not original but provided a chart for emotional growth.
So this has chemistry. It has a more clever structure than usual from Apatow; several situations that riff on scripted seduction and acting out feelings instead of being yourself, all of them more or less disastrous in the end.
There is a teacher who rewards honesty with sex, she is the only blatant caricature here, the only one out-of-place, as though being frank in a world of manipulative lovers is enough to drive one to hysterics.
In the amusing climax, all the different performers and stories they have woven are brought together with explosive results.
What it lacks and is really sunk by, is organic drama. Every moment of some emotional resonance is stressed a little too heavily, analogies are forced, the result suddenly feels a little mawkish and contrived instead of a real world. There is much talk about soul mates and true love.
This needed a European touch, preferably Spanish; visual imagination, plus a more gentle drift of dreams into fate. A simple gesture would do, say the son buying the girl of his dreams an ice-cream, like his father did 30 years before.