There is a telling line in How to Be Single (2016) that sums up why the title is misleading.  Older sister, Dr. Meg Kepley (Leslie Mann), is giving advice to her grieving younger sibling, Alice Kepley (Dakota Johnson).  Alice is sad about her seeming inability to find a guy to date, and Dr. Kepley admonishes her to stop watching things like Bridget Jones’s Diary(2001) or Sex and the City (1998-2004).  Movies and shows like them are supposedly about female empowerment, but Dr. Kepley points out that all the characters did the entire time was try to find a guy to date.  I cannot speak to the truth of this statement, having never seen them, but it belies what is really going on in How to Be Single.  What I can say this about the overwhelming majority of films I review, God is the missing ingredient to the angst felt by most of those we see.  Keep this in mind as you read what follows.

The person we first follow in How to Be Single is Alice, who also acts as the narrator.  However, before continuing, this film demands some contextualization.  While she is the de facto main character, we spend a lot of time watching the activities of a few others.  Most of them are related in some way, like Dr. Kepley and Alice.  Some are there just to add another example of different approaches to the eponymous state in life.  In the beginning, Alice is with her college boyfriend, Josh (Nicholas Braun).  They are together throughout those four years, but come graduation, she tells him that she needs a break.  He takes it better than one might expect, but that should not suggest that he is happy about the situation.  Rather, they are in this strange state where they are no longer a couple, but with the understanding that they might renew their bond.  With that, she moves to New York City to work as a paralegal where she meets Robin (Rebel Wilson).  Robin is your prototypical party girl, going out every night, sleeping with anyone she can get her hands on, and spending the in-between time indulging in a wide variety of substances.  It is a world into which she initiates Alice on the first day they are co-workers, referring to Alice’s vague relationship-status as sexual “rumspringa.”  I am sure my Christian brothers and sisters in the Amish community would not appreciate the use of their term for the time they spend away from their communities before returning to them, but I digress.  In one of these nights with Robin, they go to a bar where Tom (Anders Holm) works.  I have to take a detour here to explain Tom, and you will see why this is somewhat tricky to review.  Above Tom’s business lives Lucy (Alison Brie), a single woman whose seeming sole purpose in life is to find a husband.  To do so, she has a number of online dating profiles, but does not want to pay for Wi-Fi.  Hence, she free loads off Tom’s signal.  They are opposites, with him wanting nothing to do with a serious relationship, but her willing to put up with his forward flirtations for the use of the internet.  Nonetheless, they become friends.  Still, when Alice visits the bar, she is the one who ends up spending the night with him, mostly because Robin is insisting upon it.  Indeed, Robin becomes a staple in Alice’s life, randomly sleeping at Dr. Kepley’s apartment where Alice is currently living.  Such are Robin’s antics that Dr. Kepley eventually has to ask Alice to find another flat in which to live.  It is more Dr. Kepley being told to do so by the building’s management because otherwise she has virtually no personal life.  This has not been a problem until one day at work, one of her patients gives her their baby while they use the restroom.  Heretofore, she had been focused on her career, and the thought of having her own child was seen as folly.  Yet, looking into the toddler’s laughing face convinces her otherwise.  So, hooray for welcoming new life into the world, but a Catholic “boo” for being impregnated using in vitro fertilization (IVF).  That is a discussion for another time.  For now, Dr. Kepley is invited to Alice’s office Christmas party where the former meets Ken (Jake Lacy).  Ken shows interest in Dr. Kepley, though she believes she is too busy and old to be of any interest to him, not to mention her pregnancy.  He persists anyway, even after he learns that she is with child, which she had been trying to keep hidden from him.  Despite his persistence, she still ends up pushing him away.  As this goes on, Alice decides she is ready to go back to Josh.  However, Josh has moved on, though he continues to check on her throughout the film.  She does try to date other people, like David Stone (Damon Wayans Jr.), who she meets at an alumni function for her college that she attended.  Eventually, they start going out, and she is accepting of the fact that he has a young daughter, Phoebe (Zani Jones Mbayise). Unfortunately, there is some unresolved sadness on his part owing to the death of his wife, (Vanessa Rubio).  This comes out when Alice sings to Phoebe a song his wife used to sing, and he asks Alice to leave.  Further complicating her love life are the occasional run-ins with Josh.  It all comes to a head at Alice’s birthday.  Thinking it would be funny, Robin invites David, Josh, and Tom to see if they would fight.  Instead, while Alice manages to avoid Tom, she is given a slightly awkward apology by David, and nearly goes to bed with the now engaged Josh.  In the aftermath of this near impropriety, she realizes that she must be truly on her own.  She is also able to be there for Dr. Kepley when the physician has her baby, though she lets the dogged Ken take over.  We end with a collage of outcomes for everyone we have discussed.

The one character that I did not resolve, but is present in the collage at the end of How to Be Single, is Lucy.  She had met, fallen in love with, and got engaged to George (Jason Mantzoukas).  We learn of their engagement at Alice’s birthday party, and this provides the only scene in which you see Alice and Lucy on screen at the same time.  I get that they have the same relationship status for most of the film, but Lucy’s entire story could have been cut from the movie and I am not sure it would have made a difference.  Please do not take this is a criticism.  As a practicing Catholic, I love to see people fulfilling the Sacrament of Marriage, even if such a description is far from the lexicon of this movie, or how this particular relationship evolves.  As I indicated in the introduction, the fact that God is missing is something I could say about practically every movie I discuss.  At the same time, I am at odds with such a culture because I try to make God the center of my life.  I am not perfect in this regard by any stretch of the imagination.  As such, why choose this movie?  It might not shock some of you, but I am currently single, and thus I wondered if the movie would have any insights I could use.  It is not the first, or even the fifty-seventh, place I would look for such advice, but God can speak to us in some unexpected ways.  Indeed, this is a big part of what keeps me going with The Legionnaire.  As for today’s selection, its philosophical landing spot is that by being alone, one can figure out who they are as individuals.  This is a half-truth, and it gets the half because early in the film it mentions how so many people define themselves by their relationships.  It means the men or women we have dated.  However, your first relationship should be with God, and that is what should define you.  Today’s culture looks at such a concept as backwards or passé.  I would push back with the super abundance that is God and Catholicism.  There have been such a variety of expressions of Faith within the Church that anyone could find something that speaks to her or him.  It is good to explore oneself, but ultimately this film is about selfishness.  Doing such exploration with God is anything but.

You could be doing anything but watching How to Be Single, though that is not a fair assessment.  I did not hate my experience watching it, but I am keenly aware of the parts that do not align with my Faith.  It is also frank about a subject that I wish society saw differently.  There are some useful ideas here, but you need to be cautious.