“There’s no shortage of losers in the world.”

Justin’s rating: Where’s Wayne and Garth when Claudia Schiffer appears?

Justin’s review: It’s kind of amusing to me how there’s this entire generation that sees Robert Downey Jr. as this Iron Man megastar and yet are oblivious of his stretch when he was a washed-up druggie taking bit parts between his stays at rehab and, y’know, prison. So when we look back at his filmography from his troubled ’90s, he was all over the map with a couple bigger prestige films but mostly small, indie stuff — stuff like 1999’s Friends & Lovers.

Here, Downey Jr. plays Hans, a frosted-tips German with the most ridiculous accent ever who ends up tagging along with a group of friends to a ski retreat. It’s during this supposedly relaxing vacation that a whole lot of relationship issues are worked out amid the group. So that’s the kind of film experience you’re in for: plenty of 20-somethings spouting off semi-witty lines, dealing with love and hate and surprise revelations… and Hans Hansing it up in every scene he appears.

There’s a pregnancy pillow, a love triangle, a desperate virgin, and a father with a desire to reunite with his son. There is a guaranteed romantic resolution for every character in the span of a single weekend, which is how we did things before social media. There are also a lot of banal conversations, ham-handed attempts at comedy, and a truly weird scene comparing certain body parts. All of this is handled by a rag-tag cast including Stephen Baldwin (everyone’s least-favorite Baldwin), Claudia Schiffer, Suzanne Cryer, and Leon.

It feels like I’ve seen a plenty of movies with this format from the ’90s. Lots of confessionals of long-established friends and colorful characters and light alt-rock songs playing between scenes. Think Kicking and Screaming, Drinking Games, or Indian Summer. When movies go this route, they absolutely live or die on the likability and chemistry of their characters. If these people are a hoot to hang with, then we don’t care what they do, even if it is just pretentiously talking on couches like it’s the first season of Friends. If they’re not… then the film collapses in on itself.

And yes, this movie collapses hard. It’s simply not as funny or charming as it imagines itself to be. Roger Ebert famously dunked hard on Friends & Lovers, which kind of becomes an automatic dare to a certain segment of moviegoers. For once, he and I aren’t in disagreement. These are 30-something actors playing 20-something characters who are acting like 15-year-old idiots abruptly falling in love with each other even though they’ve all known each other for over a decade.

Nothing’s really that deep, that funny, or that memorable. Unless, of course, you count the fact that the ski slopes are the echoeyist place on earth. Or seeing Stephen Baldwin spending half the movie pounding on people’s doors in anger as they hook up. Or the oh-by-the-way lip service to the reminder that it’s Christmas. That’s kind of funny and memorable, just not in the way that the filmmakers intended.

This isn’t the worst template for a cheap feel-good flick — it just needed better everything. Better characters, better dialogue, and better jokes. But no, we get awkward parakeet analogies and farting pregnant girls and Robert Downey Jr. collecting a paycheck for betraying Germans everywhere.

Intermission!

• They timed the opening song so that the phrase “friends and lovers” happens at the same time as the title reveal
• Christmas tree picks can divide friends
• Hope you wanted a movie that starts with a fake Santa Claus arguing with a little kid
• Every party should include a lot of backstory exposition
• That pregnancy pillow is sliding all over the place, isn’t it?
• “FREE SKIING!”
• “Everybody’s parents seem great except your own.”
• Yeah just start making out and wrestling with your girlfriend on the floor in front of your host
• Maybe don’t put a metal can in a microwave
• Pregnant farting
• Full frontal male nudity makes girls run away screaming
• Pillow fight with ALL the feathers flying
• You can talk to and even hug a guy without realize that he’s your kid
• Take a bite of a snowball why not
• Snow slopes are insanely echoey
• Time for a skiing song, the soundtrack says
• This movie has a lot of “ambush kissing”
• Hans’ secret
• Sometimes girls cry when they’re happy
• Dad should not cook