The final cog is Alison Brie as Lucy, taking the role of "hot nerd", who spends her days crunching numbers on dating sites to find her perfect man. I would like to point out that this is not a real thing and that no woman has ever done that in the history of ever.
How to be Single updates the group-of-New-York-women narrative with a heartstopping spin. Perhaps these women (audible gasp) don't need a man to live a fulfilled life! Part of me is sad that this is still a big revelation in popular culture, but I'll admit the alternative is far worse.
Instead of centring their life on Mr Big, meeting on the Brooklyn Bridge at midnight, or faking an orgasm over lunch with Billy Crystal, the men in the film are almost incidental.
The male characters weave in and out of the women's lives and never plonk themselves heavily in the middle of the narrative. The result is the characters are forced to learn about themselves without being compared to anyone else - full of all the sadness, confusion and joy that comes with that.
Whenever it feels like things in the film are starting to sag, Wilson kneeslides in and says something outrageous about her vagina. It's a killer technique that I wish went over as well in real life.
When we take the magnetic men out of the centre of the rom com, what we get is a love letter to female friendship.
And, like all good love letters, you'll be cringing, rolling your eyes, and definitely crying by the end. This movie relishes in the female experience, where conversations about pubic hair and "friends with benefits" are given centre stage.
I can't reiterate how refreshing it is to see the frank, hilarious chats on screen that I normally only have after about 47 glasses of wine with my closest friends.
What is most enjoyable about How to be Single is that it resists settling on a conclusion about relationships either way. Some of the characters end up finding their (for now, anyway) other halves, others decide to go it alone.
And that's absolutely fine. Cheesy montages of Alice reading a book alone on the sunny balcony and going for a smiley lonesome workout sell singlehood particularly hard.
I think back through watching American Pie, Eurotrip, Old School as a teenager, and how those blokey representations of dating and sex must have informed my worldview in some way or another.
How refreshing and freeing to see it told through a different lens, where an older woman doesn't have to be Stifler's Mom and a young single woman isn't just a conquest to be caught on videotape. Buy an icecream, go alone, thank me later.
Rated M, in cinemas now.
