It’s sometimes said that the best first dates incorporate some sort of activity - an escape room, pub trivia, maybe a Tough Mudder competition - as a means of getting to know someone. The idea being that if a prospective couple are tossed into something other than a one-on-one chat over dinner or drinks, they might get a better sense of each other’s character traits.

The Lovebirds operates on a similar level, with the added twist that the couple involved already know each other pretty well. Jibran (Kumail Nanjiani) and Leilani (Issa Rae) have been in a relationship for four years, and after a quick glimpse at their illydic first day together, we catch up with them in mid-fight, squabbling over petty differences like Jibran’s scorn towards reality TV and Leilani’s fixation on Instagram.

However, the argument soon launches some more cutting words, and the two decide they have to break up. So it’s up to the plot of the movie to provide some kind of challenging activity to bring them together again. Instead of a date-appropriate outing, though, Leilani and Jibran find themselves on the run from the police, a mysterious killer, and an orgy-obsessed secret society. 

What follows is a studio comedy caper in the mode of Game Night or The Hangover, where unsuspecting normies are thrown into an escalating series of events, ultimately letting them bond in a way they couldn’t otherwise. However, where Game Night featured a memorable network of supporting characters and some surprising kinks in the plot, everything (even the leads) in The Lovebirds is noticeably underwritten. Other than the onscreen presence of Nanjiani and Rae, the movie doesn’t give us much else to work with. It’s the kind of 90-minute comedy that’s easily spoiled by its own trailer; the big gags that make for “thumb-stopping” marketing are the only ones this movie has in its magazine.

We don’t learn very much about Leilani and Jibran other than the kind of stuff they might have put in their dating profile: she works at an ad agency, he’s editing a documentary about “corruption in the education system”. Leilani is the more outgoing one in the relationship, pushing Jibran to go out to parties, whereas Jibran is an introvert, skeptical of new experiences. Aside from the quickest glimpse at some of their friends in the second act, neither character is fleshed out at all. We don’t learn about their hobbies, their interests, or meaningful experiences they’ve had in the past. To milk a metaphor, if the audience were on a date with these characters, they might not opt for a second one.

The criminal conspiracy would benefit from some extra detail, as well. We discover that a cabal of rich and powerful people are involved, and that they’re willing to order killings to stamp out blackmail efforts. Other than that, the filmmakers only seem to have watched a YouTube video essay or two about Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut - enough to making some winking references to the costumes and the group sex, but not enough to get any real comedy out of it.

What the movie desperately needs are some recurring characters to act as foils to Jibran and Leilani. Whether they help or hinder the couple on their mad dash for answers doesn’t matter too much - it’s how the protagonists deal with these encounters that would teach us more about them and raise the stakes of the jokes. In one dropped thread, a congressman and his wife connected to the secret society (Kyle Bornheimer and Anna Camp) only pose a brief threat to the lead couple, but their appearance suggests that if our protagonists crossed paths with them again in a meaningful way, the filmmakers could have played on the first encounter to get a bigger payoff.

The same goes for the crooked cop (Paul Sparks) who acts as the movie’s main villain. Sparks is given only one comedic scene, a reference to his character’s lost love that makes him very unstable. The joke is set up, but once again, there’s no payoff; it feels like the follow-through joke was written and even filmed, but it got cut out after a moderately chilly test screening.

In the seemingly neverending binge-watching session that is the COVID-19 pandemic, there are worse things to watch than The Lovebirds. If you like Nanjiani and Rae, it’s an inoffensive way to spend 97 minutes and keep from reading the news for a while. But you might be surprised how quickly your memory will ghost this movie once the credits roll.

The Lovebirds gets two stars out of four.

Stray thoughts

• The movie already secured an R rating for language, so it’s unclear why they didn’t push the envelope with the secret society scenes. A bit of extra nudity or violence might have given the leads something to play off.

• Given Rae and Nanjiani’s writing chops, I’d be very curious to see how this movie would have changed with a script penned directly by them.

• Instead of the Amazing Race kicker, it’s too bad the filmmakers didn’t have time to change it to some quarantine-related instead, considering that this movie’s release was sidetracked by the pandemic.