How To Be Single, film review: Hedonistic excess and an utterly formulaic script

(15) Christian Ditter, 110 mins. Starring: Dakota Johnson, Rebel Wilson, Alison Brie, Leslie Mann

(Warner Brothers)

This utterly formulaic and derivative romantic comedy borrows shamelessly from Bridget Jones's Diary and Sex and the City – and from all those books and articles about the misadventures in sex and shopping of single young women in big, bad cities.

Dakota Johnson plays Alice, a young graduate who agrees to a trial separation from her drippy college boyfriend, so she can sow a few wild oats. She takes a job in a New York law firm where her partner in mischief is the hedonistic Robin (Rebel Wilson playing yet another variation on her Fat Amy from the Pitch Perfect movies).

Other principal characters include Leslie Mann as her gynaecologist sister, a woman who has delivered thousands of babies but has no desire to have one of her own, and Lucy (Alison Brie), a Miss Lonelyhearts with wi-fi problems, looking for love on dating sites and turning up all sorts of examples of shocking and moronic masculinity in the process.

The irony here is that nobody here really wants to be single at all. For all their hedonistic excesses, they're conservative souls at heart whose idea of happiness is finding the perfect mate – either that or going on a walking trip to the Grand Canyon.