Celeste and Jesse Forever

You can get an eternal love in “Celeste and Jesse Forever”

By Jenny Alvarez

Photo Courtesy

Celeste (Jones) and Jesse (Samberg) met in high school, married young and are growing apart.  Now thirty, they decide to get divorced and attempt to stay best friends while pursuing other relationships.  This plan is not as simple as they had imagined.

Celeste—imperious, successful and driven– is convinced that divorcing the boyish Jesse is the right thing to do.   Jesse passively accepts this transition into friendship, even though he still is in love with her. As the reality of their separation sets in, Celeste slowly and painfully realizes she has been cavalier about their relationship. But her timing with Jesse is less than fortuitous.

The film is a humorous and honest examination of a broken heart and the long, hard road it takes to heal it. When the film gets weaker, it’s because it has moved away from the funny-because-it’s-true aesthetic toward one that’s more broad and contrived: Celeste falling out of a garbage can she was snooping in just as Jesse arrives; a series of bad first dates that become exaggeratedly awful. Even though the storyline grows conventional, these two’s inherent sweetness gives the movie its heart – even if their characters may not end up together.

Finally, this movie is a reliable commercial genre and a decent supporting cast, and the main character faults herself for presuming she’s more intelligent than others, and so does the entire production. However, relationships are in that way, lots of laughs, and lots of heart.