2/10
The Breaker Upperers is a bizarre and painfully awkward attempt to take Kiwi director Taika Waititi’s recent success with Thor: Ragnarok and tries to profit off it. Just to clear up any confusion up front (because I was confused) Taika Waititi is nothing more an Executive Producer on this film; so don’t go in expecting his usual wit because you won’t get it in this film.
Written, directed and starring in the lead roles is Madeleine Sami and Jackie van Beek who play Mel and Jen respectively who run an agency that’s sole purpose is to break up couples. To ease their guilty conscience, they insist that they do it to help the partner being dumped move on with their life easier, but truthfully they’ve both been hurt by past relationships and use the business as a source of distraction. Predictably, Mel falls in love with one of their clients who is substantially younger and the relationship causes a rift in her and Jen’s friendship.
Unfortunately, there’s nothing overly original or memorable about the film worth. A lot of the jokes don’t land properly, and while they tried to make fun of a lot of stereotypes often seen in films such as the younger generation, women in relationships with much younger men, and women carrying a torch for a bad past relationship, it has a sad, desperate feel to it.
Overall the film’s a bit ‘blah’. I can see what they were trying to do and the issues about being a woman in today’s society that they were trying to mock, but it didn’t manage to convincingly pull it off. There was still a lot of reliance on old tropes that kept the film down, rather than creating something truly real to the female experience that could have been achieved in the tongue in cheek style they were attempting to achieve. Skip it.