Review by Steve Bennett

This has a couple of things in common with the romantic comedy films which inspired it. Firstly, by the end you have fallen for the main characters. Secondly, it’s not actually that funny even though you REALLY want it to be.

The appealing premise is that single girls Lizzie Mace and Juliette Burton were going to try to meet men based on scenes from their favourite movies. For example, wearing a massive hat to a wedding, as Andie McDowell did in Four Weddings, or talking to coma patients as Sandra Bullock did in While You Were Sleeping.

Only problem was that all these failed in what we can only assume were not particularly comedic ways, as they first ten to 15 minutes seems to be reeling off the ideas followed by their catchphrase ‘…and it didn’t work’. With so many comedic dead ends quick dispatched, this is clearly not going to be some Dave Gorman-like comedy documentary.

After eliminating all the interesting set-ups, they are left with pretty much talking to men as being the best way to meet them, so they just hit the bars. Or, using the only real bit of the ‘rom com’ premise still intact, try to find people they instantly dislike to see if they couldn’t eventually fall for each other.

The format thus becomes Blind Date, where they each go out with a couple of unlikely candidates, then report back direct to camera to see if there was any spark. It’s kind of entertaining, but not really funny – a theme for the entire hour – and the video interviews go on for far too long.

It also suffered because the acoustics in the Canons’ Gait are not good, so in certain parts of the room it was a struggle to either hear what was being said or read the subtitles on the screen. Guess where I was… The video was also used to air interviews with couples about how they met: a nod to when Harry Met Sally for the rom com experts in the room.

Mace and Burton are jolly hosts, and make you want to like this more than it probably demands. Mace appears a bit more geeky and shy, forced out of her comfort zone to go on the dates; Burton, pretty and perky, brings a bit more get-up-and-go to proceedings.

Neither are natural stand-ups – actresses more like – and especially at the start, there’s some theatrical distance between themselves and the audience, though they jauntily romp through their script until they bundle towards their impossibly trite conclusions.

‘Real life and real loves are so much more complicated [than rom coms] and that’s why they are more precious,’ is one of their many glib assertions, which seem to come flying out like an explosion in a cliché factory.

They are likeable girls, and this is a mildly diverting hour – but it’s difficult to fall in love with the show judged on its merits as a comedy.

Review date: 11 Aug 2012
Reviewed by: Steve Bennett
Reviewed at: PBH's Free Fringe @ Canons' Gait