Taglines: A loved story.
For the long time that married Celeste and Jesse have known each other, being best friends has always been first and foremost, even now that they are officially separated for six months and headed toward divorce. They still hang out with each other as best friends every day, with Jesse living and working as a freelance graphic artist in Celeste’s guest house.
The separation and imminent divorce was largely Celeste’s idea, she a successful social trend analyst, recently published author, and co-principle of a media consulting firm with her gay business partner, Scott. Driven Celeste could not be married to someone as lackadaisical toward work and earning money as Jesse, who is in no hurry to get more permanent and stable work even in his field, preferring his recreational activities and largely living off what Celeste earned.
Their mutual friends, seeing how happy they still are whenever they are together, cannot understand why they are headed toward divorce. Jesse would still prefer to remain married to Celeste, he still seeing her as his soul mate. Things start to change in their relationship when Jesse, seeing the reality of the situation, is the first to move on from them as a couple, entering into a relationship with a woman named Veronica. Out of circumstance in the situation with Veronica, Jesse slowly transitions into being that mature human being that Celeste so wanted in him for their marriage.
Celeste and Jesse Forever is a 2012 American romantic comedy-drama film directed by Lee Toland Krieger. It stars Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg, and was written by Jones and Will McCormack, who also has a role in the film. It was released on August 3, 2012, in New York and Los Angeles.
Film Review for Celeste and Jesse Forever
“Celeste and Jesse Forever” is a good-hearted romantic comedy about a likable couple — so likable, indeed, that it swims upstream against the current of our desires. The two have been happily married for years, long enough so their friends think of them as a unit, and now they’ve decided she’ll stay in the house and he’ll move into his studio in the backyard. “But we’re still best friends,” they explain to everyone. To me those are five of the saddest words in romance.
This decision upsets and even offends their friends, because after certain people become fixed stars in their firmament, they feel threatened if things change. If the marriage between Celeste and Jesse isn’t working out, what can they expect to happen in their own lives? In a sense they have the duty to stay together just to set a good example.
Celeste and Jesse are played by Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg, who make an appealing couple. That doesn’t come as a surprise about Jones, but Samberg shows a dimension here that would have been difficult to guess from “Saturday Night Live.” The movie benefits from a sound screenplay by Jones and Will McCormack, who write dialogue and create supporting characters who don’t seem like air-headed plot puppets, the way so many rom-com characters do. There’s a certain respect for their feelings.
Of course they play opposites, but opposites attract. She’s Type A, he’s Type Zzzzzz. They comfortably occupy what seems to be the same double act, in which they can spin off in-jokes of indefinite length for their own amusement. Given their personality types, of course it’s Celeste who asks for the divorce. Jesse would never arouse himself to such a pitch. She is ambitious for herself, ambitious for him, ambitious for their marriage, and incapable of staying in a marriage that has no particular problems except that she can imagine a better one. They’ve been married for six years, and she’s closing in on the seven-year itch.
It appears they can coast along forever as best friends, especially if it were up to Jesse to initiate change. Their status quo is jolted, however, when Jesse receives a completely unexpected piece of news. No, it’s not something like being told he has only weeks to live. That would place the story on a fixed trajectory. His new information, which I won’t reveal, brings a sudden infusion of reality into their lives — especially into Celeste’s, because it’s the kind of one-upmanship she’s temperamentally incapable of dealing with. Jesse, who is so conveniently passive, suddenly finds himself holding the winning card in their game of emotions.
There are time-honored formulas for romantic comedies, and “Celeste and Jesse Forever” avoids them. It begins with a group of believable modern Los Angelinos, embeds them in a fantasy and then introduces a plot twist that’s both unexpected and devastating to their cozy routine.
In the supporting cast we get small but not cookie-cutter roles for actors such as Ari Graynor as Celeste’s devastated best friend, Emma Roberts as a freshly minted teen queen, and Elijah Wood as Celeste’s buddy at work in an L.A. trend-spotting shop. I’m not surprised that Rashida Jones took the lead in writing this screenplay; the way things are going now, if an actress doesn’t write a good role for herself, no one else is going to write one.
Celeste and Jesse Forever (2012)
Directed by: Lee Toland Krieger
Starring: Rashida Jones, Andy Samberg, Elijah Wood, Ari Graynor, Eric Christian Olsen, Shira Lazar, Will McCormack, Kate Krieger, Andreas Beckett, Emma Roberts, Rebecca Dayan, Janel Parrish
Screenplay by: Rashida Jones, Will McCormack
Production Design by: Ian Phillips
Cinematography by: David Lanzenberg
Film Editing by: Yana Gorskaya
Costume Design by: Julia Caston
Art Direction by: Joseph Oxford
Music by: Zach Cowie, Sunny Levine
MPAA Rating: R for language, sexual content and drug use.
Distributed by: Sony Pictures Classics
Release Date: August 3, 2012
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