It’s time for a classic romantic comedy title. It’s a fun enough film that has a nice plot. I would say the film restrains itself a bit too much at times and could have really drummed up the craziness of it all a bit more. Still, it’s an easy film for me to recommend to anyone and it’s fairly short so things tend to move fast.

The film starts off by introducing us to Jim and Ginny who have a really good marriage going on. They have no real problems and Ginny is finally pregnant after nearly a decade so they are ready for fun. The only problem is that Jim’s job has been taken over by a new company and they might be letting some people go. When almost everybody except for Jim gets an invite to a luncheon, he figures that this is game over. Should he talk things over with the bosses and see what’s going on…or should he crash out? Time for Jim’s toughest call!

Now a lot of this film does rely on Jim not making the smartest choices time and time again. He jumps to conclusions quite regularly and doesn’t put himself in a position to succeed. It’s a story that we have all seen many times before but it can be pretty funny. I would have liked for things to have been more extreme like I mentioned in the intro though. Like one misunderstanding that worked super well is when someone jokes with Jim that he won’t be ordering the boxes because he might mess it up. The guy was just having some fun and Jim didn’t pick up on it because he was so stressed.

Beyond that, we don’t have a ton of big misunderstandings going on though. So a lot of it is Jim really just overthinking things and I feel like it’s because the film wanted to stay very grounded. You could have really had it both ways in this case though. Also Jim does look pretty bad throughout because of how callous he was when the shoe was on the other foot. At the beginning of the film he talks quite happily about how some guys will get fired and that’s just how life works. He talks a lot about survival of the fittest and all of that. It makes it ever so slightly harder to root for him here because you know first hand that he would not really care if someone else was fired.

He took his safe standing within the company for granted to the point where he didn’t even imagine not having the job. It’s why his friend Steve is comfortable about joking how he would be super depressed and end it all if he was fired. Nothing wrong with the jokes but then you have to be able to take it when you’re the one going down. Instead Jim was super defensive and panicking the whole time. It just didn’t do wonders to make him likable and then of course when he’s frustrated he is very quick to start taking it out on his wife. Being snappy, irritated, etc.

Jim doesn’t talk about things until it is forced out of him and it’s jut such a standard move but it is always a character killer. You can’t be so close to someone and then immediately still get so upset like that. He needed to talk things over and calm down. Ginny is also shown to be super reasonable the whole time so it’s not like there was any risk of her being upset. There was no downside to talking things out with her instead of straining everything like when he wasn’t acting very concerned about her pregnancy results coming out negative.

His friend Steve seemed a lot more reasonable and was a good guy to the end. He prevented Jim from making any career destroying decisions the whole time. His wife Syd may have been someone who just wouldn’t start talking but at least she wasn’t actually trying to cause harm. So I won’t really dock her any points there. She meant well and of course this goes back to how the characters don’t mind smack talking everyone except when it effects them. The double standards are where things really start to get dicey.

If there are any other main issues here, it can be that you feel like there should have been another angle to the film. Either make the jokes a bit bigger like I mentioned or introduce another plot. Even though the film isn’t all that long, it feels like there isn’t anywhere for it to really go. So it’s a serviceable film but not a super memorable one. It’s nice to see a married couple without too much drama but in the meantime their scenes tend to be a little on the boring side. Showing how close they are in the opening also backfires because of how easy we see Jim turn on her later on. You may as well cut out the intro at that point.

I did like the fact that Jim’s immediate boss had his back. Often times in these things it feels like the main character is on his own throughout management but since he was such a good worker, it makes sense that some people would have his back. It would have been annoying if the boss was just looking out for himself or something like that. The top executives were also pretty solid. They asked the hard questions and pressed Jim a little. They did seem really good at their jobs and it’s not like they take joy in letting anyone go. They are just doing their jobs and doing them well. This is an example of a movie that didn’t really have an antagonist but ultimately didn’t need one anyway.

Overall, High Cost of Loving is a good film. It hits enough of the right notes to skate on by and it’s one that you could easily watch because it’s just light entertainment. It has good replay value in that way. It does reinforce why you should always have proper communication channels open with everyone. If you don’t, then it opens the door for misunderstandings and panic. Also, perhaps keep the jokes to a minimum if you would be upset if the same thing happened to you.

Overall 6/10