Film

I Give It a Year

Name: I Give It a Year
Genre: Comedy, Romance
Released: 2013
Cast: Rose Byrne, Rafe Spall, Simon Baker, Anna Faris, Stephen Merchant

A newlyweds comedy about a couple whose whirlwind romance crashes into reality during their first married year. Dan Mazer's sharp, ensemble-driven debut uses a sprawling cast and quick-cut comedy to excavate the gap between wedding-day fantasy and actual cohabitation. It's for people who find genuine humour in relationship dysfunction and don't mind their romance movies messy.

TMDb rating

2.8

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you enjoy british romcoms that treat marriage as a chaotic comedy of manners, with sharp verbal jabs and a supporting cast that steals every scene they're in.

Skip it if you want your romantic comedy warm and gentle; this one leans on crude, cringe-heavy humour and its jokes land unevenly across its ninety-seven minutes.

What it asks of you: Roughly an hour and a half of brisk, talky scenes that keep switching register, so it rewards a little patience with its broader, more abrasive stretches.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

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Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from I Give It a Year

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

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The Split2018

Both understand that relationships are sites of genuine comedy and genuine harm simultaneously. *The Split* just pulls the lens back to ask what happens when the comedy stops being funny.

British drama about a family of divorce lawyers navigating their own relationships. It takes the exact machinery of *I Give It a Year*—the friction of intimacy, the gap between what we want and what we can live with—and turns it into something genuinely serious without ever losing its sense of humour.

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Scenes from a Marriage2021

If *I Give It a Year* uses comedy to deflect from the real hurt underneath marriage, *Scenes from a Marriage* uses marriage to explore the real hurt underneath everything. Same machinery, entirely different tonal register—proof that the rhythm of a failing relationship stays the same whether it's funny or tragic.

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But It's Bergman: sparse, demanding, absolutely without humour except the dark kind. Watching it requires you to sit still in discomfort for hours.