This review contains Spoilers for As Good As You. As much as you can consider them spoilers.
When I walked into this movie I didn't have many expectations. I decided to watch it because Bryan Dechart was in it and I like him as an actor. The premise was simple enough from the summary and so I sat down and loaded it up only to find a rather disappointing piece of cinema.
To start, don't let summaries and synopsis' fool you, this movie may be listed as a comedy but I'm not sure you could really even say it was funny let alone qualified for it to fall under the comedy genre. It's a drama, and not a very good one at that.
From the start, the wife, Amanda, is dead. We are introduced to our three main characters who are honestly all incredibly unlikeable in their own right. Lisa is a crass punk lesbian with a no-non-sense attitude which apparently equates to constantly being cagey and rude to her friends. Nate is a lonely drunk who sits in the corner and flirts with lesbians he doesn't have a chance with and makes everyone uncomfortable. Then we have the main character Jo who is desperate, needy, and whiny throughout the whole film and generally just is a terrible human being that you can't find any sympathy for whatsoever.
When they say love triangle in summaries, the are greatly exaggerating the truth which is that Jo happens to have a one-night stand with Nate and Lisa separately but has no actual feelings for them whatsoever. A proper love triangle makes you wonder who they'll end up with in the end, but you were highly aware that she wouldn't end up with either, ever.
They're trying to make the characters complex but suddenly things just jump out that make no sense or just make you go "I don't honestly care". Like the fact that Nate's wife also died and he never told any of his friends he was even ever married let alone that he lost his spouse. But in the same vein, I still have no clue what happened to Jo's wife. We get hints that Jo took care of her for a year and a half suggesting she was sick and died of an illness but what that illness was, was never specified or clearly implied.
The acting was also appalling. I've seen better acting in FallOut games. Nearly none of the characters felt believable and half the conversation felt forced and clearly scripted instead of flowing like a normal conversation.
Now for the only redeeming quality of the whole movie: Jamie, aka Bryan Dechart. Maybe I'm completely biased, but this character has the best acting out of any of them and is really the only person who manages to deliver any lines that can make you laugh. Whenever he's in the scene, conversations flow better and the characters feel more real. Jamie is also the only reasonable person in the whole movie and acts as the mediator to everything. He manages to reason with Jo that she's not ready to have a baby, manages to push Lisa and Nate to get over themselves and even calls Nate out on lying to him, and generally manages to be a sane and responsible adult.
This, however, was not enough to save the movie as it felt like the movie had no reason for existing. It felt like some college kid grabbed his friends and said "hey I have an idea for a movie let's do it" and only one of those friends happened to be in the drama club. You don't care about any of the characters, you aren't curious about how it ends, it's just highly unenjoyable from start to finish.
If you are someone who came for good LGBT content you did not come to the right movie as it does a terrible job of making any meaningful Gay relationships. Jo and Amanda can be assumed to have had a good marriage but who knows when you never see Amanda and never even see them interact in flashbacks.
Review by kotaDkotaBlockedParentSpoilers2020-01-07T08:56:18Z
This review contains Spoilers for As Good As You. As much as you can consider them spoilers.
When I walked into this movie I didn't have many expectations. I decided to watch it because Bryan Dechart was in it and I like him as an actor. The premise was simple enough from the summary and so I sat down and loaded it up only to find a rather disappointing piece of cinema.
To start, don't let summaries and synopsis' fool you, this movie may be listed as a comedy but I'm not sure you could really even say it was funny let alone qualified for it to fall under the comedy genre. It's a drama, and not a very good one at that.
From the start, the wife, Amanda, is dead. We are introduced to our three main characters who are honestly all incredibly unlikeable in their own right. Lisa is a crass punk lesbian with a no-non-sense attitude which apparently equates to constantly being cagey and rude to her friends. Nate is a lonely drunk who sits in the corner and flirts with lesbians he doesn't have a chance with and makes everyone uncomfortable. Then we have the main character Jo who is desperate, needy, and whiny throughout the whole film and generally just is a terrible human being that you can't find any sympathy for whatsoever.
When they say love triangle in summaries, the are greatly exaggerating the truth which is that Jo happens to have a one-night stand with Nate and Lisa separately but has no actual feelings for them whatsoever. A proper love triangle makes you wonder who they'll end up with in the end, but you were highly aware that she wouldn't end up with either, ever.
They're trying to make the characters complex but suddenly things just jump out that make no sense or just make you go "I don't honestly care". Like the fact that Nate's wife also died and he never told any of his friends he was even ever married let alone that he lost his spouse. But in the same vein, I still have no clue what happened to Jo's wife. We get hints that Jo took care of her for a year and a half suggesting she was sick and died of an illness but what that illness was, was never specified or clearly implied.
The acting was also appalling. I've seen better acting in FallOut games. Nearly none of the characters felt believable and half the conversation felt forced and clearly scripted instead of flowing like a normal conversation.
Now for the only redeeming quality of the whole movie: Jamie, aka Bryan Dechart. Maybe I'm completely biased, but this character has the best acting out of any of them and is really the only person who manages to deliver any lines that can make you laugh. Whenever he's in the scene, conversations flow better and the characters feel more real. Jamie is also the only reasonable person in the whole movie and acts as the mediator to everything. He manages to reason with Jo that she's not ready to have a baby, manages to push Lisa and Nate to get over themselves and even calls Nate out on lying to him, and generally manages to be a sane and responsible adult.
This, however, was not enough to save the movie as it felt like the movie had no reason for existing. It felt like some college kid grabbed his friends and said "hey I have an idea for a movie let's do it" and only one of those friends happened to be in the drama club. You don't care about any of the characters, you aren't curious about how it ends, it's just highly unenjoyable from start to finish.
If you are someone who came for good LGBT content you did not come to the right movie as it does a terrible job of making any meaningful Gay relationships. Jo and Amanda can be assumed to have had a good marriage but who knows when you never see Amanda and never even see them interact in flashbacks.
All in all: It's okay to skip this one