Palm Springs
Might contain spoilers.
I’d been looking forward to seeing this one for ages, and I wasn’t disappointed in the least. It was a little bit strange, very fun, sweet, funny, and even moving on a few occasions.
It’s always strange to see Andy Samberg as anyone but Jake Peralta from Brooklyn Nine-Nine, unless it’s an absurd character like Conner in Popstar: Never Stop Not Stopping (possibly a perfect film, as it happens). Nevertheless, he was perfectly cast. His skills as a comedian brought the darker aspects of the character into sharp relief—Niles’s face betrayed his trauma in every moment. Meanwhile, his girlfriend (Meredith Hagner) was a standout amongst the many amusing characters who provided the right amount of levity to balance what could have been a much more intense film.
I liked Cristin Milioti as Sarah vastly more than as the mother on How I Met Your Mother. (That I can’t even remember said mother’s name tells you everything you need to know.) Just like Sarah, I’m not comfortable with Niles lying about whether’d they slept together before. I can completely empathize with her reaction, and I don’t think it’s fully dealt with at any point. The resolution is cursory, only there so the plot can progress. This is perhaps the movie’s one major sin.
When it comes to more minor sins, though, I have to ask: should Sarah really be letting her sister marry this non-person who just cheated on her? Wouldn’t you want to know if your husband cheated on you the night before your wedding? I’m pretty sure ‘speak now or forever hold your peace’ was made for this. She’s bound to stumble upon the truth sometime, and I can’t imagine it would be better to know 10 years later than when she’s marrying the man.
IMDb has a bit of relevant trivia pertaining to why the dinosaurs showed up again at the end:
Seeing dinosaurs in the desert is impossible, and its timing is intentional as the pair have concluded that neither of them deserve love and in fact find it impossible for themselves. It's the moment that fully sold Cristin Milioti on the script.
I suppose I’ll have to accept that.