Starring: Charlie Day, Jenny Slate, Gina Rodriguez, Scott Eastwood, Manny Jacinto, Mason Gooding, Clark Backo, Jami Gertz, Jordan Carlos, Midori Francis
OUR RATING: ★★★☆☆
Story:
Amazon Prime romantic comedy directed by Jason Orley. I Want You Back (2022) follows Peter (Charlie Day) and Emma (Jenny Slate), two thirty-somethings who have each been left by their respective partners, Anne (Gina Rodriguez) and Noah (Scott Eastwood). After learning that the loves of their lives have already moved on, Anne with Logan (Manny Jacinto), and Noah with Ginny (Clark Backo), Peter and Emma decide to team up to win their exes back by destroying their new relationships.
Our Favorite Quotes:
'Maybe you can't force it. Maybe you just have to do the best you can on your own. And if you do a really good job, and you're lucky, then you find someone.' - Emma (I Want You Back) Share on X
Best Quotes
Emma: Are you trying to be the cutest, sweetest, nicest boyfriend in the world? Because you’re really winning.
Noah: Emma, I’m breaking up with you.
Anne: I want to break up with you.
Peter: What?!
Noah: You also don’t even know what you want to do with your life.
Emma: I think I’m just kind of like doing it. Twenyty-nine is the new sixteen.
Noah: You’re thirty-two.
Emma: Yeah. I mean, if you want to be like a scientist about it, I’m thirty-two.
Noah: Look, I met someone.
Emma: Why didn’t you just say that instead of making me eat your steak?
Anne: We’re stuck. No, what do we do? We go to work, and we make salmon, and we watch Dancing with the Stars.
Peter: Oh, come on. We do stuff. We went to Wind Creek Casino to see Rod Stewart.
Anne: I was never supposed to be an English teacher, Peter. My sense memory professor said I could’ve been the next Kate Winslet.
Peter: You still could be.
Anne: Not with you.
Anne: Six years and we’ve never even been out of the country together.
Peter: But we did go see…
Anne: Don’t say Rod Stewart.
Rita: These people are on death’s door, and we are spending way too much money feeding them. Who has pitches?
Janine: We could stop offering ice.
Rita: How would their drinks be cold?
Janine: They wouldn’t.
'The slow burn, who gets under your skin, that's way more rare. That's your airplane safety mask person.' - Emma (I Want You Back) Share on X
Matt: We could replace our real chicken with a much cheaper new product called Hint of Chicken.
Rita: What the hell is Hint of Chicken?
Matt: The name’s pretty self-explanatory, ma’am.
Rita: Can you liquefy it and sip it through a straw?
Matt: Yes, ma’am.
Rita: You can gum it?
Matt: No teeth required.
Rita: Is it a protein?
Matt: It’s protein adjacent.
Peter: Having a rough week.
Emma: Me too.
Peter: Just got dumped.
Emma: Oh, me too.
Peter: Oh, yeah? That’s weird.
Emma: It’s terrible.
Peter: Anne and I were together for six years.
Emma: Holy s**t.
Peter: Yeah, I know. And I wanted to get married. Have kids, all that. But, you know, she wanted to be an artist, and I guess drink wine with some f***-wad in a Fonzie jacket.
Emma: Noah wants a woman who owns a pie shop.
Peter: I love pie. I’m sorry I just said that. I probably shouldn’t have said that.
Emma: It’s cool. Everyone loves pie.
Peter: Pie’s actually not that great. It’s very, there’s very limited options when it comes to pie.
Emma: Okay.
Peter: This was awkward.
Emma: Very.
Emma: Dying alone is not that bad. Like why do you want someone to watch you die? That’s like actually embarrassing.
Peter: That’s right. Dying alone’s actually pretty sweet, because you’re all alone, and no one’s bothering you.
Peter: I love being single! I’m really looking forward to it! All the apps! Getting on the apps!
Emma: Yeah!
Peter: That’s going to be cool.
Emma: Swipe left. Swipe right. Who’s ugly?
Peter: [to Emma] They dumped us, right? If they miss us, they’ll call. But they’re never going to miss us if we call. So we can’t call if we want them to miss us, or call.
Peter: How about, whenever we’re feeling like we really have to call them, and we just can’t take it anymore, instead of calling our exes, let’s call each other.
Emma: I love that. I love it, because we’re intercepting each other’s sadness.
Peter: Yes.
Emma: Yes. We’re each other’s Sadness Sisters.
Peter: Well, Sadness Sisters sounds like you’re Diane Keaton, and I’m Meryl Streep, and we’re in a Broadway play. But I like it. Yeah!
Emma: That’s a great cast. You should cast plays.
Emma: Thanks for meeting me.
Peter: That’s what the Sadness Sisters are for, right?
Emma: I’m sad because Noah was my airplane safety mask person.
Peter: Your what?
Emma: My airplane safety mask person.
Peter: What is that?
Emma: Have you ever been on an airplane, and they play that video that says, “Please secure your own oxygen mask before helping others?”
Peter: Yeah, that’s every airplane I’ve been on.
Emma: Well, I remember, when I was little, thinking that, if I were ever really in love, and I was on an airplane with my lover, that I would put his mask on before my own.
Peter: When you were little, you used the word “lover” in your thoughts?
We're all just pretending that we know what we're doing, and we're hoping that we don't screw it up too badly.' - Emma (I Want You Back) Share on X
Peter: You’re actually putting your “lover” at greater risk by not putting your own mask on first, so.
Emma: No, but it’s not about that. It’s about romance.
Peter: [reading Logan’s social media bio] I can’t take it with this guy. Look at that bio.
Emma: “Logan Santos. Artist. Director. Human.”
Peter: Oh, you’re a human man?
Emma: Wow.
Peter: Dude, that’s awesome. What’s that like?
Emma: I bet he’s a chill hang.
Peter: I can’t do this. I can’t start over, you know? I’m too old. I’m too old. I missed the boat. All my friends, they’re married, they got kids. My one friend Dave, he’s got a twelve year-old son. Dave has a kid who’s old enough to have his own kid.
Emma: You think twelve years-old is old enough to have a kid?
Peter: I’m not saying it’d be a good idea. I’m just saying Cody’s definitely gone through puberty, so his body’s definitely producing semen.
Peter: The point is, at this rate, I’m going to wind up old and alone. I’m going to have no grandkids. I’m going to be eating Hint of Chicken in one of the hellhole nursing homes I helped create.
Emma: Oh, me too. I’m never going to find a man as kind and good as Noah.
Emma: We can’t give up. We have to get them back.
Peter: What?
Emma: It’s just like you said. We know that we’re supposed to be with Noah and Anne. But I’m not so sure that they’re going to realize it, not with these shiny new people around.
Peter: So what are we supposed to do?
Emma: We have to break them up.
Peter: Well, that’s crazy. We can’t do that. How would we do that?
'Sometimes seeing someone you once loved embrace new love can be healing.' - Logan (I Want You Back) Share on X
Emma: I could tell Noah that I’m pregnant with his baby.
Peter: Alright. How does that help me?
Emma: You tell Anne she’s pregnant with your baby.
Emma: I think that you are somebody that a person could fall very deeply in love with.
Peter: Thank you?
Emma: But it’s more like slowly. Over five or six months.
Peter: Okay.
Emma: Or like a year. Two years, tops.
Peter: Do you realize the number’s going up?
Emma: But I do think that you could become Noah’s friend.
Peter: I could do that. I mean, people like to be my friend. I’m extremely affable. You know, in college, all the girls were like, “You’re such a good friend.”
Emma: Aw, darn it.
Emma: [to Peter] I will seduce Logan. You will friendship seduce Noah. And we will win back our people.
Peter: Look at us! This is like Cruel Intentions, only sexier.
Emma: How is it sexier?
Peter: It’s not.
Trailer: