Lots of comedies in the last year or so have focused on whether two people can be involved sexually without being involved romantically. "Celeste and Jesse Forever" asks if two people who were involved sexually can be involved platonically. Both beat the dead horse of "complicated" relationships in film, but what's nice about "Celeste and Jesse" is that it never loses its comic edge in spite of melodrama.

Rashida Jones and Andy Samberg star as the titular couple in the process of a divorce, but because they spent so long as best friends, they have no concept of needing to draw boundaries.

It's a tough sell early on, that two people could go through a divorce yet essentially live together and spend time together in a somewhat intimate fashion. Jones, who co-wrote the script with Will McCormack (who has a supporting role),chooses to make Celeste and Jesse opposites in terms of professional status (he's a slacker artist, she's a big-deal trend forecaster) in order to justify why, despite their fabulous on-screen chemistry, they're not meant to stay married. It takes a bit of story wizardry, namely physical obstacles that force them apart, but somehow it makes sense, probably because Jones and Samberg are so likable.

The story then plays out like the emotional roller coaster of a relationship between two people who feel one thing but do another. It's exhausting, at times, as a third-party observer, to watch them fall in and out of the same predictable problems. A few scenes will certainly elicit shouts at the screen of "just get back together already!" or "stop screwing around and end it!" — depending on the scene.

Naturally, each character has his and her attempts to rebound by going on dates with other people and trying new relationships. To this point we've seen enough of the formula to know how that part of the story goes: two former lovers get mad at each other, the one who didn't really want to split rebounds first, the other says they're really happy for that person but secretly can't stand it, etc. That's all here in "Celeste and Jesse Forever."

So what's the saving grace? Something that makes "Celeste and Jesse" stand out from the pack? The answer is the simple refusal to ever take itself too seriously. Without it, the film would likely devolve into a train wreck of predictable moments.

In spite of the absurd tear count in the movie, Celeste is never shy about cracking a joke, nor the script afraid go out on a limb with something more extreme and less believable. This, in a movie that so fiercely tries to capture the gray area in relationships in a truthful way. Humor keeps the film in check, especially for us, who would otherwise happily chop up the script and divide the pieces into piles marked "realistic" and "unrealistic." The quirkier tone and moments maintain the soft illusion of a more fantastical real-life relationship story.

Director Lee Toland Krieger nicely flows back and forth between both up-close-and-personal realism and more standard-order comedy camera-work. On a few occasions he makes bold choices, some that work, some that backfire, but the comic and dramatic moments almost never butt heads.

Life in Los Angeles is, for many, a fantasy of a sort, and "Celeste and Jesse" could easily be deemed a story that could "only happen in L.A." In addition to the frozen yogurt and the exposure of the fraud that is trendy exercise, Celeste works in the entertainment industry and post-Jesse she's set up on all these dates with successful creative people. Scenes take place in all kinds of exotic clubs, so much of the context surrounding these characters oozes with a superficiality that makes the film both great and disturbing.

A little more troubling is the legit problem that Jesse disappears in large chunks of this film. There's a reason Celeste comes first in the billing, and that's because the movie only shows intimate moments featuring her (and the ones she shares with Jesse). Samberg doesn't get much of a chance to prove himself as a talent that can go below the surface. The script treats Jesse like a child, kind of like the way Celeste sees him. There's artist value to this decision, but the moments between the two of them are too lopsided in our minds. Great romance movies get you charged up because you feel a certain way about both characters, and in this film we only really feel what Celeste feels.

There's something special in "Celeste and Jesse," however, some rare ability to see the humor in the personally tragic, the potential for levity and irony in any situation. The emotional place that these two best friends arrive at in the end might not be as satisfying as that in a strong romance or rom-com, nor as poetic as in a tragedy, but with its playful disposition, it manages to carve out a place that's different, one that stands out from the pack just enough.

~Steven C

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Rashida Jones & Andy Samberg are Celeste & Jesse. They are best friends who are getting divorced, except they want to stay friend.

Ari Graynor & Eric Christian Olsen are their best friends Beth & Tucker who are getting married. They can't understand Celeste & Jesse's relationship. "It's weird." For most of this movie, everybody is annoying. Celeste is a know-it-all. Jesse is a slacker loser. The people they meet are all douche-bags and drug dealers, both friends & strangers. It is a whole hour of HELL watching this movie full of annoying self obsessed people.

Emma Roberts is a pop princess Riley client of Celeste. At the beginning, she is yet another annoying character in the movie. However her character turns it around. She calls Celeste on her arrogance, "Contempt prior to investigation". This breaks Celeste down to her core, and she spirals down. Until Riley comes to her rescue again, this time commiserating over failed relationships.

Riley is truly the big emotional catalyst. Only she needed to save this movie earlier. The "Contempt..." line comes 1 hour into the movie. Before that, it was stuck in emotional neutral. That's way too long.

As another reviewer interestingly stated: It's tough to put this in a box or label it for that matter. Of course the first impression is that this is a romantic comedy, which is a fair assessment of the movie. But it would also be unfair to the movie to only boil it down to this. There is more to it and it deals with Human interaction and emotions on a bigger scale than this.

The two leads are terrific and unlike other romantic movies, you actually don't know where this will lead you from the get go. They play with such a gusto (great script/story matched with the acting talent to pull it off). It's also nice to see flawed characters, but not comically flawed. We all have our downfalls and we all have things/issues we work on. And the movie does concentrate on the female lead, which is a nice touch too. A really good (romantic) drama with comedy touches