David Wain and Michael Showalter are names you may not recognize right away but chances are you have seen a comedy they have been involved with. Going all the way back to the MTV sketch show THE STATE, Showalter and Wain have been responsible for movies like WET HOT AMERICAN SUMMER. Their latest film is a spoof of romantic comedies titled THEY CAME TOGETHER starring Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd. It has been a long time since a decent spoof has hit theaters that wasn't of the SCARY MOVIE variety, especially with names this big involved.
BuzzFeed premiered the first clip and poster for THEY CAME TOGETHER and from the looks of it, this movie is going to roast romcoms and all of their cliche moments. In many ways, Poehler and Rudd could have made a legitimate romantic comedy and it likely would have done very well, but I much prefer seeing them take the genre to task.
Here is a statement from the filmmakers regarding the project.
After having already made world-changing cinematic statements on adolescence (Wet Hot American Summer), religion (The Ten), service (Role Models), and community (Wanderlust), I teamed up with Michael Showalter to take on a topic that (to our knowledge) has yet been seen in the movies: ROMANCE — particularly heterosexual romance between two white people.
Our next idea was to mix this romance story with humor – so you could almost call this a Romantic-Comedy, so to speak.
We first worked with Amy Poehler and Paul Rudd on Wet Hot American Summer. They played summer camp counselors in that movie, so it was obviously hard for us to imagine them playing a shopkeeper and a corporate executive, respectively. But thanks to a team of acting coaches and an award™ winning VFX team, we pulled off the illusion.
THEY CAME TOGETHER will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on January 24th and also stars Michael Ian Black, Christopher Meloni, Ken Marino, Max Greenfield, Cobie Smulders, Ed Helms, Melanie Lynsky, Michael Shannon, Jason Mantzoukas, and Michaela Watkins.