After watching the film Marry Me, Owen Wilson absolutely has a group of single women in pursuit of single fathers who tell awkward yet charming dad jokes, aren’t phased by what’s happening on social media, and prefer to spend quiet nights at home. Not only is his representation organic and lighthearted, but Wilson is also very charming through the intellectual bookworm persona of his character, and it does indeed work for him.
In Marry Me, Wilson plays Charlie Gilbert, a single father and dedicated math teacher who is very much content with his life. After experiencing an abrupt divorce from his daughter’s mother, Charlie is challenged by his long-time friend and co-worker Parker Debbs (Sarah Silverman) to live a life that’s actually meaningful, contrary to the synchronized routine he’s been getting by with. Parker drags him to the Kat Valdez (Jennifer Lopez) concert. In this star-studded show, the global pop star will marry her fellow musician fiancé Bastian (Colombian singer-songwriter Maluma). Still, as the show is happening, Kat finds out that Bastian has been having an affair with her assistant.
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Kat ends their engagement and unexpectedly selects Charlie out of the crowd, who is also holding a “Marry Me” sign that was Parker’s. She proposes to marry him in front of the packed arena out of a desire to try something new, with someone completely different from the group of guys she has been known to attract. Kat, immersed in the complex structure of celebrity, social media engagement, and booking the schedule to upcoming gigs, quickly finds solace in Charlie. He has zero cares about managing an image and has real responsibilities, finding happiness in the simple aspects of life.
Charlie and Kat don’t yet know that things will become severely complicated down the line. Bastian underhandedly tries to navigate his way back into the life of Kat, seeking to temporarily dismantle their evolving relationship. In a cinema-endued hyper universe filled with full-out musical performances and international media speculation, basing the film’s plot around whether or not Jennifer Lopez will get married again, people are ignoring Owen Wilson’s spectacular performance. Let’s take a deep dive into why the veteran actor’s return to mainstream romantic comedies should have been hyped more.
Owen Wilson’s Charm Shines Through
Universal Pictures
Before watching Marry Me, it was unanimous that there was an abundance of speculation around whether or not the film was actually going to capture viewers. Although iconic, rom-coms can toe the existing thin line between a hit or miss. There are romantic comedies that instantly appeal to an audience. Then there are romantic comedies that grow on us years later. What’s so astonishing is not just how good Owen Wilson’s performance is, because he’s already one of the most adaptable and dynamic actors, but the wow factor lies in his increasingly evident charm.
The persona of Charlie being a dad’s dad, a guy who wears a plethora of plat button-ups, while telling apparent dad jokes (now the jokes aren’t that funny, but Charlie is just so cute that you have to laugh with him) is a testament to how much time and energy he incorporated into further conceptualizing his character. By the film’s second act, it was noticeable that Charlie was the catch all along.
Owen Wilson’s Rom-Com Comeback Role
Since the early 2000s, Wilson has starred in a flood of comedies, consisting of Zoolander (2001), Starsky & Hutch (2004), Wedding Crashers (2005), You, Me and Dupree (2006), How Do You Know (2010), The Big Year (2011), and The Internship (2013), to name a few. Although he’s still stuck to acting since then, scaling back into supporting projects, Marry Me catapults him right back into leading Hollywood actor stardom, an elite group he’s often been ranked in. Why are we still fixated on whether Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck are going to tie the knot, a topic that has nothing to do with the performances related to this film. Focusing on the project should be what’s most important.
So if anyone is ever going to discuss Marry Me, bringing up Owen Wilson’s iconic performance is absolutely necessary. Every incorporation of comedy, serious dialogue, and super cute dad moments with his onscreen daughter Lou (Chloe Coleman) was perfect enough to reel viewers in and keep them engaged. To sum it up, if Marry Me is the transition from the early 2000s narrative around conventional romantic comedy films, Owen Wilson is beyond a doubt the perfect actor to lead viewers into the new era of romance while in a hyper digitalized age. (Does Owen Wilson even have an Instagram account, by the way?)
