Metacritic reviews

It’s one of the most endearing romantic comedies in recent memory, with some laugh-out-loud dialogue, gorgeous photography and uniformly charming performances from the entire cast.

Much like its characters' romantic lives, How to Be Single is more enjoyable when it's being casual.

How to Be Single isn't doing anything that some flop probably starring Katherine Heigl hasn't done before. This appealing cast at times works wonders with what they're being asked to play.

You might say that How To Be Single suffers from the influence of its older, more put-together sister Sex And The City, right down to the sappy montage and voice-over it needs to tie everything together at the end.

The whole affair is too cluttered to clip along, laugh to laugh, love to love. Director Christian Ditter (“Love, Rosie”) had too many characters to serve to give anybody room to breathe.

The script offers enough laughs to keep the movie from feeling completely disposable...and it outshines many of its genre peers through little touches like not punishing its female characters for enjoying sex and casting Damon Wayans Jr. (as a romantic interest for Alice) in a role in which his race is thoroughly irrelevant.

Splintered between thinly sketched focal points rather than actually plumbing the real fear, paranoia and elation that come from operating without a romantic partner, How to Be Single never transcends its most sitcom-y instincts.

An entertaining movie that, while lacking real substance or stellar acting, hints at themes to which we can definitely all relate.

Ultimately, How to Be Single feels reverse-engineered to justify its ending, which while admittedly gratifying, can’t accurately be described as happy. For that, it would have to be worth the contrivances, cliches and tedium that have gone before.

It will probably not surprise you to learn that this film, generically directed by Christian Ditter (“Love, Rosie”), was written by the people behind 2009’s “He’s Just Not That Into You.” Seven years later, guess what? He’s still not that into you! And I wouldn’t be, either, not with this lot.