Movie review: Celeste and Jesse Forever

(15)

A romantic comedy with barbs, Celeste and Jesse Forever probes into the nooks of relationships that When Harry Met Sally-style films leave well alone.

Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg play a thirtysomething Californian couple enduring a very slow divorce. She’s a highly ambitious trends analyst who has just written a book called Shitegeist about the shallowness of contemporary popular culture. He’s a good-natured drifter who prefers surfing to working. The film has its moments of very icky mawkishness but it’s also consistently funny, caustic and well observed. The formidable Jones, who also co-wrote the script, excels as the woman who thinks she knows exactly where she is going but ends up hopelessly lost.