Netflix’s Nobody Wants This, streaming on Netflix, is the most pitch-perfect serialized romcom I’ve seen in years. It is smart, funny, impish, and wise, without making any visible effort to be any of these. The dialogues are unerringly bang-on and unfailingly amusing.
You can’t afford to skip a beat in this one, no Sirreee! Not without wondering why everyone else in the room is laughing. Ah, that is another thing about Nobody Wants This: you have to watch it with those whom you love. There is a sense of community joy in the way the characters address their own problems without seeming self-centred. They aren’t telling us how to live our lives, but they aren’t ruling out any tips either.
So what is all the fuss about? It all begins when Joanne (Kristen Bell) meets a “hot rabbi” (that’s what all his teenaged disciples call him, and who are we to disagree?) Noah (Adam Brody). Sparks fly, especially when Noah smooches Joanne on the streets of NY, a kiss that she describes as “the single greatest kiss of my entire existence.”
Well, muuah to that.
What follows are nine more enrapturing episodes, all crisp and appetizing, on what happens when a sexy podcaster falls in love with a hot rabbi… or some such. Explaining the romantic procedure in this wondrous series in any way is doing it a great disservice.
This is an experience that transcends the words (albeit very clever and irresistible) to reach a core issue in all romantic alliances: how much importance should the family be given when two people are in love?
The two families in Nobody Wants This are so vividly portrayed and so astutely assimilated into the primary plot and the central romance that they almost seem, what Joanne describes in Jewish as “bashert”: pre-ordained, meant to be.
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Come to think of it, the supporting cast is actually more charming than the main lead, which is saying A LOT considering how fabulous Bell and Brody are together and apart, playing more than just a part. But sorry, Kristen Bell, Justine Lupe, who plays Ms Bell’s sister Morgan, is the star of the show, no doubt about it. She steals every moment from her screen sister, which is really to the screenplay’s advantage as the two sisters are constantly warring and snapping at one another, though not in any over-dramatic look-we-are-doing-sibling-rivalry way.
Nothing in Nobody Wants This is unwanted. I know that sounds lame, considering how swimmingly sagacious the lines are, as a Rabbi brings a ‘Shiksa’ home. The unlikely romance reminded me of Dino Risi’s 1970 Italian film The Priest’s Wife, in which Marcello Mastroianni played a priest and Sophia Loren the celibacy-breaker.
Do Adam Brody and Kristen Bell have the seductive charm of Mastroianni and Loren? Hell, no! They are more attainable, accessible, and real in their mutual desire to have a normal life. Special mention must be made of Timothy Simons and Jackie Tohn as Noah’s brother and sister-in-law. Simons, especially, gets so close to the core of his character, makes him so vulnerable, goofy, henpecked, and heroic… he is scarily get-at-able.
