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The premise of Set It Up is goofy in that peculiarly romantic comedy way. Two overworked assistants decide to set up their workaholic bosses, on the grounds that while the bosses are dating, the assistants can finally get some time to relax. Along the way, they fall in love with each other.
Also, Lucy Liu plays one of the bosses, Kirsten, who runs a sports website online. How can you say no to that? (Actually I think the movie lets her off easy for being as terrible of a boss that she is, but I suppose if you’re going to let someone off easy it might as well be Lucy Liu.) But the real stand-outs are the assistants: fast-talking, sports-loving Harper, who wants to write (she’s got a great idea for an article about the Gerilympics, which are an Olympics for old people) but is too busy managing Kirsten’s life to ever get anything written; and Charlie, who…
Well, okay, the real stand-out is Harper. Charlie is handsome and affable and sometimes kind of a jerk, but not so much so that I was screaming “NO! STOP!” when they finally got together. There’s a great scene where Harper tells him off for acting with a total lack of integrity, at which point he points out that their entire scheme lacks integrity, but instead of crumbling in the face of this false equivalency, Harper accepts this truth but holds fast to the fact that this is worse. It may be sleazy to set your bosses up without their knowledge, but it’s a whole lot worse to let them go ahead and get married when you know for a fact that one of them is cheating with his ex-wife.
Charlie resists for a while, but eventually he recognizes that she’s right and then rushes to the airport to stop the wedding! And a bystander thinks that Charlie is there, in classic rom-com fashion, to propose to Kirsten, at which point Charlie gets quite flustered, which may be why he (like Harper before him, when she confessed their plan to Kirsten, who promptly fired her) fails to tell Kirsten the most salient piece of information - your fiance is cheating on you! - but she breaks up with him anyway so I guess it doesn’t matter.
The secondary characters were also well-drawn. My favorite is Harper’s best friend Becca, a formerly promiscuous party girl who has just gotten engaged, and in her engagement speech offers this gem: “We like because and we love despite.” We like people because of their good qualities, and love them despite their faults. Or, to put it another way, we know we’ve moved beyond superficial liking to a deeper connection when we know someone well enough to know their faults, and love them anyway.
Also, Lucy Liu plays one of the bosses, Kirsten, who runs a sports website online. How can you say no to that? (Actually I think the movie lets her off easy for being as terrible of a boss that she is, but I suppose if you’re going to let someone off easy it might as well be Lucy Liu.) But the real stand-outs are the assistants: fast-talking, sports-loving Harper, who wants to write (she’s got a great idea for an article about the Gerilympics, which are an Olympics for old people) but is too busy managing Kirsten’s life to ever get anything written; and Charlie, who…
Well, okay, the real stand-out is Harper. Charlie is handsome and affable and sometimes kind of a jerk, but not so much so that I was screaming “NO! STOP!” when they finally got together. There’s a great scene where Harper tells him off for acting with a total lack of integrity, at which point he points out that their entire scheme lacks integrity, but instead of crumbling in the face of this false equivalency, Harper accepts this truth but holds fast to the fact that this is worse. It may be sleazy to set your bosses up without their knowledge, but it’s a whole lot worse to let them go ahead and get married when you know for a fact that one of them is cheating with his ex-wife.
Charlie resists for a while, but eventually he recognizes that she’s right and then rushes to the airport to stop the wedding! And a bystander thinks that Charlie is there, in classic rom-com fashion, to propose to Kirsten, at which point Charlie gets quite flustered, which may be why he (like Harper before him, when she confessed their plan to Kirsten, who promptly fired her) fails to tell Kirsten the most salient piece of information - your fiance is cheating on you! - but she breaks up with him anyway so I guess it doesn’t matter.
The secondary characters were also well-drawn. My favorite is Harper’s best friend Becca, a formerly promiscuous party girl who has just gotten engaged, and in her engagement speech offers this gem: “We like because and we love despite.” We like people because of their good qualities, and love them despite their faults. Or, to put it another way, we know we’ve moved beyond superficial liking to a deeper connection when we know someone well enough to know their faults, and love them anyway.
