A reverse romantic comedy in which a duo of jilted lovers collaborate on a ruse to regain the affections of their exes, Jason Orley’s I Want You Back (B+) is chock-full of fun and charm. Charlie Day and Jenny Slate are a hoot as the goofy twosome in cahoots, with Gina Rodriguez and Scott Eastwood effective as the seemingly winning lovers who abandoned them. Slate in particular is a delight in her role and lends a droll demeanor as an unconventional leading lady on a path to self-discovery. Many of the romcom genre’s formulaic conventions are front and center but in wry, warped form, and the writers play to the comic talents of the ensemble with confident effect. It’s full of fun detours including a jaunty infiltration of a middle school musical, karaoke and nightclub sequences of tremendous joy and a variety of pratfalls and showdowns worthy of the story’s idiosyncratic characters. Amidst the madcap events is a series of smart observations about compatibility and personal destiny. Swipe left or right on your streaming service to connect with this film.

Director Kat Coiro finds some glimmers of final act sparkle to doll up the dirge of Marry Me (D+), which for most of its duration is misbegotten and monotonous and features one of the decade’s most chemistry-free romantic couples. Jennifer Lopez no doubt has considerable allure, and it’s on display in her costume, choreography and compositions, but wow, is her romance with Luke Wilson’s character a big ole clunker! The preposterous premise that Lopez’s pop music star character proposes from the concert stage to an everyman in the crowd keeps getting worse before it gets better. About thirty minutes before the end, Coiro and company put the narrative out of its misery and compensate with at least two great pop anthems, charming celebrity cameos including Latin star Maluma and a treasure trove of fabulous fashions. Most of the film simply doesn’t work, not for a lack of J.Lo trying. Wilson’s understated performance is simply no match for her singular spectacle, and surface gloss cannot repair this fussy and unfunny high concept.

Have you ever had that tense dream when you show up for a final exam but missed the entire preceding semester of study? Or you appear on a stage to perform in a play but never memorized the script or blocking? Sure, you can get by with a little help from your friends, but your tour of duty will be dotted with some magical mysteries not easily solved. Even with the witty words of screenwriter Richard Curtis and music and lyrics of none other than The Beatles, Director Danny Boyle’s tonal troubles are here to stay in Yesterday (C-), his fussy maiden voyage into the romantic comedy genre. Sprinkle in a painfully miscast and unfunny Himesh Patel as the lead character, and base it all on a Twilight Zone style premise of “What if only one person on earth knew of the existence and song catalogue of The Beatles, and what if he were a singer who could pass off the tunes as his own?,” and you have a movie director seriously in need of a lot of hand holding. Only a lovely performance by Lily James, who lifts the love interest role into master class territory, keeps the plot grounded amidst Boyle’s kaleidoscopic swirl of perplexing supporting characters, floating fonts and fissures in the space-time continuum. A movie promising the Fab Four’s fanciful fare gets an uncomfortably competing and cloying dose of Ed Sheeran music (the musician plays himself) and very little joy or creativity in the live performances. The lead character is so wound up in guilt about the plagiarized origins of his source material that his music is robbed of its joy. This misbegotten effort is not without its occasional charms. For instance, there was some nice commentary about whether the presence of genius would even be noticed by a society marred by short attention spans. But the smiles and specific song you leave humming at the film’s finale don’t help harvest the fruit of Boyle’s often rotten strawberry field.

Despite appealing performers, Hollie Meyers-Shyer’s Home Again (D+) misses the mark in nearly every way. Reese Witherspoon plays an L.A.-based single mom whose brush with three plucky young filmmakers (Pico Alexander, Jon Rudnitsky and Nat Wolf) prompts an unconventional living situation. Candice Bergen and Michael Sheen are among those in the ensemble wasted by a phony series of unbelievably benign events. Nobody behaves convincingly in their designated profession. The biggest first world problem of all is a rom com that’s not funny or charming.