Set It Up JBTF10... — Judging By the First 10...

Estimated read-time = 46.6 minutes

JBTF10? Worth Watching.

Review synopsis: Ten minutes into a rom-com, what should we expect? Well, wait. I'm not the audience here. So, what should the audience for Set It Up be able to expect from a rom-com? Likable characters, yes? Two people who may be quirky, sure. But not in a cartoonish way. Just two people who could be plausibly single. Two people with chemistry that we, despite all odds, even AOL Messaging (You’ve Got Mail? Remember that one? No?), hope will get together in the end.

Here, we've (excuse me) set up our two characters who are destined for romance, but they're jerks. In preparing to bring this review home here, I finally read the logline that pops up when you pause. Their bosses are referred to as "workaholics." Workaholics CAN be jerks, sure. But Ellen’s and Cameron's bosses, as presented thus far, are just two cartoonish assholes (which is interesting, considering the respective charisma of each actor playing them). What's also interesting is the small difference in the dynamics between each boss and their assistant.

With respect to the First 10, Ellen is always Ellen, whether she be pitching non-ideas to her Lucy Liu or shoveling cold pasta onto cold beef on the streets of Manhattan. She is played as having a big heart, which the world is constantly trampling on. But there are two Camerons in the same First 10. We have the Supplicant Cameron, who trails behind his man of taste, contorting himself (just as Ellen always does). But away from the green juice, lemon battery–hating gaze of his boss, he's Sneaky Cameron. Maybe not an Alpha unto himself, but certainly a Beta that flexes his muscles when he finds it convenient.

So, to return to the question of likable characters. Yeah, Ellen seems likable, as long as she isn't making me crawl out of my “Cameron is a shifty and opportunistic pickle thief” perspective. And both have bosses who display aspects of pure (and/or cartoonish) psychopathy. Do we want to keep watching this? Yes? I think so? We've had some attempts at com(edy). Even though this involved Coming Coitus man. And street food (LITERALLY guys). And the aforementioned pickle. The question though, is there any rom(anza) on the horizon? That piston also needs to get firing for this to truly count as a rom-com. What of breaks, and healing, and being whole by movie's end? The bosses already seem broken.

Do we really believe the titular setup will solve anything for Ellen or Cameron? Or do we think Cameron and Ellen will actually fall for each other once Picklegate dies down? When you're so focused on trying to satisfy your boss's insane demands, can you honestly "see" the needs/wants/desires of others? Can you honestly see your own? I think I know how this will all end up. But I'm curious to see how Netflix gets us there. That's why Set It Up seems (wait for it ... ) worth seeing through. FINAL NOTE: While I always have fun with character names in these reviews (often I think, creating little release-valves as we lose ourselves in the totality of a movie's First 10), it's only now, at the end of this review, that I realize I have no idea what the names of our two leads are.

Odd, that.

Stars: Zoey Deutch (as Harper!), Glen Powell (as Charlie!), and Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs (as Workaholics?)

Directed by: Claire Scanlon

Written by: Katie Silberman

Check streaming availability via JustWatch

JBTF10 Review: Set It Up

Found by Netflixing: What a Man Wants

Oh man. This review was going so well. Was WAY out in front of Valentine's Day. We were actually going to have this sucker live, like, a day before. That's pretty good for us right now.

What's more, a Valentine's Day JBTF10 was ALSO going to coincide PERFECTLY with our first ever request – a rom-com. (Hey Rachel, thanks!)

On top of it all, What a Man Wants, which is the sequel (reboot? prequel? Jar Jar?) of Mel Gibson’s What a Woman Wants circa 2000 was going to be hitting theaters. And that led to our movie here today, and omfg things were clicking, I lost a pound ... etc.

Then I broke my arm.

I'm 40. I'll admit this to you because, having read every single JBTF10 in existence, multiple times, you're basically family to me now. So, in the four decades this world has tolerated me, I'd never broken a bone until I slipped on the ice a couple months ago. Hit the ground hard and fast. And I felt a new and horrible and strong sensation in my right arm that I had never felt before. Not a good feeling. And I instantly thought, "Oh. I just broke my arm."

I'm mending now. I think. Broke the top of my radius bone right near the elbow. Didn't need surgery, despite having some "bone shards" "floating" "around" "in there." (Modern medicine!) We're letting it heal itself for five weeks and then it's back to the orthopedic doc to see what's what. I was lucky. Lots of folks cracked their heads that day. But know friends, writing has been a bit harder as of late. So, I apologize in advance if JBTF10 is a bit briefer than you've come to expect. Nay, demand.

That being said, let's press on. Because dammit, this is about CINEMA. Er, film. Movies. (*coughOnNetflixcough*) Sorry about that. My arm.

So, pre-radius-bone-break intro scrapped. GONE. And here we are, a bit less than whole. Which is apropos for a rom-com isn't it? Because what is a rom-com if not a story about breaking and healing, promises ... expectations ... hearts.

Have you ever had your heart broken, dear reader? I imagine most of us have at least once (hopefully not many more times than that). Did your heart heal over time? Heartache can hurt as much or more than a broken bone. But does a heart heal itself over time if we care for it? Or do we, over time, simply learn to live around the pain, much as I've done with my bum arm? Do rom-coms ever dance around in ideas like this? (I'm getting to it Rachel, I swear.)

What A Man Wants has been out in theaters for a while now. But, fortunately, I'd searched for it already on Netflix back when I started this review. Back ... when it would have been ... timely. Oh well, so little of the rest of this streaming movie experiment makes sense. What’s more, in past reviews I’ve opted NOT to choose from the bevy of Netflix-produced content the Chaos Monkey presents us with. Today, let’s flip the script:

Am I supposed to be able to tell the difference between what’s a TV show and which is a movie? (BUH on that Friends splash image btw.) Again, we’ve been asked to wrastle with a rom-com here ... and at a glance, Set It Up gives me the rommiest, er, commiest(?) vibe. We might even be looking at a classic meet-cute here, which is hopefully not a spoiler. So. Okay Netflix, let’s see how you do:

The First 10 of Set It Up begins with one of those little custom production company logos that no one ever recognizes.

Very pretty. But how does this add to the movie? In a theater, you are stuck there with your bucket of popcorn. But in streaming this film, this whole production company deal (which is animated btw) is burning precious “do I want to be watching this” time. Sort of like when a movie begins with a director credit for someone you’ve never heard of (i.e., A [first name] [last name] film).

Hah. Okay, sorry Netflix. I wasn’t talking about you. So at this point, we begin hearing phones ringing. Office phones by the sound of them. And demanding people yelling at other people about needs and wants. It sounds horrid. Then, uh oh, as we open on the inside of a modern office building, Nowhere to Run by Martha Reeves and the Vandellas begins to play.

You like this song? That is okay? There is nothing wrong with the song itself. But like we discussed covering the First 10 of Like Father, when used as it will be here, the song is basically employed as musical exposition. Musicposition. Musicalsition. Whatever. More or less, the point the filmmakers are trying to make will be songsplained (THERE IT IS!) to us over a montage or something over the next 5 minutes or so. It’s a bit lazy. Maybe not a cheat. But a bit lazy. UNLESS your movie is about machines, including and mostly semi-trucks, one of which is sporting a giant goblin face, that become sentient and terrorize people because ... a comet, or something. If THAT is your movie, then by all means kick things off with AC/DC’s Hells Bells. But methinks there won’t be many evil trucks in this movie ... shame really.

Set It Up is setting itself up in a modern (New York?) office building. And there’s nowhere to run, baby. There’s nowhere to hide for the terrified woman in the cubicle we pan over to.

Is she scared of the meeting we saw taking place beside her? Seemed to be a pretty chill meeting. But then a man (not in the meeting) (we only hear him) yells, “Hey, What’s-your-face …”

The woman bolts from her chair, knocking it over in the process, and sort-of-sprints around her cubicle, then stops suddenly when on its far side, walking forward instead with calm restraint.

But ... where is she going? At first, I thought she stopped short and did her chill walk because she’d be walking straight into this guy’s office.

Right. But that would take her right into the wall. Now we do have what appears to be another office right next to the conference room …

Yup. But if this dude is in here, then he would have been able to see the woman bolt up from the chair and sprint around her cubicle. Which would make her attempts to stop and actually walk into his office calmly moot.

C’mon ya’ll. This is a Netflix film, right? It’s a Treehouse Production?!? Only a minute in, and we already have a fatal flaw in the logic of this movie. I expect more from you both. Fortunately, before the whole goddamned thing unravels, we cut ...

... to this woman. She is picking up someone’s lunch. That someone doesn’t like onions. But this lunch has onions on it. This woman needs the person behind the counter to understand that onions are fatal. As in, she will get fired if she brings back lunch with onions on it. I guess you could take the onions off. But there would probably still be an oniony funk to whatever the food is. So yeah, this woman’s panic attack is probably justified. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide ... from these onions ... yeah?

Oh, and the woman watching this whole thing unfold is holding a Dasani sparkling water. Dasani is owned by Coca-Cola. Think it’s just a coincidence the panicked woman is wearing a red shirt? Wake the fuck up people. I know, not everyone here has a $30,000 Communications Track 3 (*coughFilmProductioncough*) from the University of Iowa ... but you still gotta keep your eyes open. Nothing in a film happens on accident. Unless it’s a Judd Apatow film.

Hope it all works out for her. Because, as the music continues, we cut to Key Guy. Key Guy gets a nice rack-focus intro as he implores someone off camera to ignore New York (called it) State Law and duplicate this key that says do not duplicate. Because boss-law supersedes state law.

Meanwhile, in the background, the lyrics (which clash a bit with what the actors are saying) go:

'Cause I know you're no good for me / but you've become a part of me …

So ... the message is that toxic bosses are not good for us, but (ironically) become part of who we are? Is that what we’re going for here? That the relationship between a boss and their assistant is like a relationship where we know a person is no good for us, but we can’t quit them because we love them so much? Because when you pick a song to use in your movie, it’s because the whole thing is advancing the goals of the filmmakers right? It’s not just, like, the title made sense and people are so used to the song they will barely notice it’s playing, and when you’ve got Netflix money, you can get the rights to whatever floats your boat? Cause, like, when you hear ...

When I look in the mirror to comb my hair / I see your face just a smiling there

Don’t you immediately think of all the bad bosses you’ve had to try and make happy in your life?

As this guy who has a sociology degree threatens the woman on the other end of this call that he is willing to sit on hold until the end of time if that’s what it takes to get his boss’s flight bumped to first class, do we think he is envisioning his boss’s smiling face? Btw, how does staying on hold work as leverage to get your flight upgraded? Does being on hold cost a company money? That makes a certain amount of sense.

Nowhere to run baby …

We get a sudden split-screen montage of other overwhelmed assistants answering their phones to ensure their respective bosses they are coming. Including one guy who is having intercourse with a woman (we only see her leg over his shoulder) and who grunts into his cellphone that he is also “coming.”

Nope. This is the guy we see after the sexing guy. He is telling the girlfriend of his boss that he (the boss) is breaking up with her and she needs to get out of his apartment by 6 p.m. that evening. I did not want to show you the having sex guy, even though I’m glad(?) the guy they cast for that scene was not some ripped stud. Just a guy with a guy body.

The corniness of the scene plays oddly against the conservative nature with which they shot it (again, just the lady’s leg is all we see of her). But that turns the woman (assuming it’s a woman) into a prop. Which is an odd place to pull your audience into for a toss-off joke.

Again, proceeding along with our montage and songsposition™, we get some clever editing. But when the clever editing is used to set up and deliver a warm piss joke, it all rings off. Now, while I didn’t want to show you the Coming Coitus guy, I do feel the responsibility to inform you that if your pee sample is real pee, you need to keep it chilled:

In this case, my hope would be the challenge of reheating it is not yours to bear. But if the pee in your sample is artificial, you should be okay keeping that bad boy at room temperature. And you know what, I probably should have gone incognito to Google that. Shit. I do hope I get to meet my secret digital avatar someday. Going to be an interesting dude, for sure.

But hey, the song is wrapping up, so the montage needs to as well. We conclude with the lyric “end of the day,” where every single assistant in New York leaves work at the same time, happily going home to not work.

But we’ve already established earlier in the montage that their bosses can and do terrorize these poor people 24/7 (including during sexy time), so I’m not certain why everyone is acting like school just let out for summer.

Suddenly it’s dark. So, these people have been leaving work for a while now. But it’s here, as we follow one particular off-worker from a low-angle shot that pivots up to a building above, that it becomes clear not all the assistants have been able to leave for the evening.

“Be free. Save yourself,” the woman in the window says. Aww. All of the other assistants get to go home and have their sex interrupted by their bosses while this poor woman has to stay cooped up here, wherever we now are.

Nowhere to Run finally fades away and is replaced with light, quirky music. The kind that bounces around like: “Quirk-ka-ki worky-worky quirky ka-ki-wa-worky-worky …” (YES. JUST LIKE THAT DAMMIT!)

This young trapped woman turns from the window and walks back through a dark, empty office while rubbing her eyes.

She steals a squeaky little football off a co-worker’s desk and proceeds to play catch with herself which, I’m pretty sure, is, like, a total metaphor or something. (Iowa Film School!)

Sitting down (at her desk) on which rests a MACINTOSH COMPUTER she turns back and maybe looks up at a poster of Babe Ruth that is hanging behind her for some reason. I don’t know what is going on.

Suddenly:

Lucy Liu manifests and demands sustenance. Uh oh. #BadBossAlert

She proclaims that her bones are eating themselves to stay alive.

Okay.

But our assumed heroine is undeterred, just as she is barely paid a living wage to be.

Man, this actress looks super like some other actress. Ellen Page maybe? This is going to bug me. Much like it visibly bugs our heroine that, yes, it seems we are doing a “second dinner” here.

Oh, but that’s not all. Lucy Liu chucks her JAWBONE UP (pedometer) at her assistant and instructs her to make sure it’s at 10,000 steps before her next session with so and so. To conceal the fact that Lucy Liu has not been working out between sessions. This is what we in the business refer to as “character show-us-ing.”

We cut to our heroine, who I think looks like Ellen Page, dancing around the office while trying to order food. It takes me a second, but I finally connect the dots that she’s working on her boss’s “steps” while she orders. We also see here that the backgrounds/screensavers of the office computers say The Line Up. We must be in the offices of The Line Up. Which appears to have something to do with swimming. Or pool ownership and maintenance perhaps.

Quirky music continues. Truffle mac and cheese is ordered. Along with a burger. It will take 45 minutes. I wonder how many takes the actress playing Ellen Page had to do while running around like this. 45 minutes is cool Ellen Page says. She’ll still be here in 45 minutes. Because, as she says, she’ll be here forever. Wonder how the guy taking the order responded to that?

Who cares, because we cut outside in the night as the camera glides down to rest at a man walking down the sidewalk who looks like Cameron from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. It isn’t. Because Cameron isn’t a real person. But it looks like Cameron. So, he’s Cameron for us.

Speaking of Cameron, he’s strolling rather thoughtfully down the sidewalk. But when he gets to the end of the sidewalk he does an ... about face? Kinda like a slow “oh-damn-I-just-left-the-house-without-flushing-the-toilet” kind of turnaround. I think he’s loitering?

Or something?

There is a different kind of quirky music playing now. Cameron’s Theme no doubt.

A wider shot shows us that we and he are all outside of The District Club. That’s helpful. Thanks movie.

Cameron tells the large man working the door that he is just waiting for his boss. “Rick Otis? He invented Shark Tank? One of Forbes 40 under 40?”

(Forbes compiles a similar list. But Fortune magazine actually does the “40 under 40” (see here). Did the movie get it wrong? Ed.) —> (checking….)

The large man uses nice words to tell Cameron to flip-off.

Cameron wisely backs up a bit and says he is going to call his girlfriend. But I while I do believe he is about to make a call, methinks it may not be to call this so-called “girlfriend.”

“Her name’s Suze,” he continues in an improv-sort-of mumble. “Very pretty.”

See? Told you this dude looks like Cameron.

So, Cameron begins to have a fake conversation on his phone about how Rick’s working a little late at The District Club. But then Taye Diggs (as Rick) walks out the door talking on his own cellphone. At seeing this, Cameron throws his cellphone away mid-convo.

Taye Diggs finishes his call and Cameron’s there instantly, producing a bottle from his bag as he asks if his boss is going to invest, in something. Why did he throw his phone?

Taye Diggs, taking what appears to be a bottle of healthy juice (of which he cannot open the lid and has Cameron do for him), says he will invest in that company when they figure out how to dip their [penises] in ink and write the Japanese symbol for horseshit. Which, by the way, seems like it would actually take about 13 [penis] strokes as hiragana:

(More or less ... been a while since I took Japanese …)

Taye Diggs is about to take a swig of his green drink. But he stops abruptly. He takes a deep breath and then asks Cameron to “do the thing.” Oh God …

Cameron begins to, uh, pillow talk his boss — only, with food items I assume his boss would rather be enjoying instead of chugging down his green drink. It’s weird. And very brief. With no real payoff. Which makes it weirder. Maybe this pays off in Act 3?

While Taye Diggs tries his best not to barf his green drink, Cameron tries to wish his boss the best for the evening.

But Taye Diggs does a very real bad-boss thing, in lambasting Cameron for not knowing that they are about to go back to the office together, which Cameron couldn’t have known but SHOULD HAVE KNOWN.

Cameron is caught off guard, and stammers about whether he should order his boss dinner. But his boss just had his juice man, and wonders what the hell is wrong with Cameron. What the hell is wrong Cameron?

It’s just that, Cameron begins to explain, sometimes his boss ends up wanting dinner. Taye Diggs looks insulted and/or offended and tells Cameron to shut his damn door. We hear a quirky music cue (oboes?) play here ... so I’m going out on a limb and betting this whole green-juice-dinner-situation isn’t quite OVER YET!

Cameron shuts the damn door.

We suddenly rejoin Ellen Page and Lucy Liu. Out of breath, Ellen sets the JAWBONE UP down on her boss’s desk. Struggling to catch her breath, Ellen inquires if, tomorrow, we’ll still be posting that article about [name I’m not familiar with] in the morning and the [last name I’m not familiar with] in the afternoon.

Nope.

Lucy Liu informs us the afternoon article’s author is still writing like he’s at the Post (yee-OWCH) and she needs fresh eyes for a rewrite. Tough working with geniuses ... yeah?

As Lucy Liu fixes her gaze on Ellen Page, Ellen Page wipes her right hand across the front of her shirt. What is happening? Is Ellen the fresh eyes? Is it the freshness of Ellen’s eyes that is being implied here? There is no quirky music playing, so I do not understand if this will come back up later in the movie.

“Did you return my blue jacket?” Lucy Liu asks, suddenly.

Ellen Page informs Lucy Liu she did, and it sounds like it was quite the ordeal. But Ellen procured a full refund for her boss.

“I want it back,” Lucy Liu says without missing a beat.

(sadtrombone.com)

“What else?” Lucy Liu continues.

There’s lots else, which Ellen reads off rapid fire. Wedding stuff, reservations ... stuff. And while the point on the surface here seems to be about how people expect things of Lucy Liu are that are BENEATH her, I think the little nugget we’re supposed to get here is that Ellen’s boss is SINGLE.

Single? In a rom-com? Ruh-roh … Too bad there isn’t another assistant with a demanding boss who might make for someone worth (record scratch) setting it, up ... with. Set it up. Let’s set they [it?] up. The title.

Ellen is instructed to decline every invitation and send, in lieu of Liu, a two-hundred-dollar gift, and Ellen notes as much as she excuses herself from her boss’s office.

But randomly, Lucy Liu yells, “And there should be THREE TIMES as many story ideas by now …”

Oh?

Oh.

Don’t Ellen. Don’t do it. Don’t listen to the screenplay ...

Ellen turns. She’s going to do it.

But first she caveats that it’s not fleshed out or anything … she hasn’t cracked it or anything.

“Oh great. You’re telling me it’s bad before I’ve even heard it,” Lucy Liu says, not incorrectly.

“It’s this thing …”

“ ... called the Geri Olympics?”

Lucy Liu squints at Ellen.

“It’s an Olympics for senior citizens.” (Oh yeah! Kim’s grandfather competes in that.)

“And they have races, and Ping-Pong and Nerf basketball and weightlifting …” Nerf basketball?

“And yes, people think it’s silly.”

Lucy Liu seems moved. Ellen continues.

“People think it’s silly …”

(Quirky music begins ... uh oh Ellen …)

“But it gives them something to live for,” she says. “And, a lot of them were athletes who never even got a chance to,” she begins to choke up, “to live their dreams.”

(Quirky quirk … still no real response from Lucy Liu)

Ellen keeps trying to explain why she is emotional here, that sports can just provide (cellphone buzzes) “ ... your dinner, which I’ll go get right now.”

Quirky quirk, Ellen leaves, and we cut back to Taye Diggs and Cameron.

Before we move on here, I’m glad something unique and interesting like the Geri Olympics got mentioned so folks, via the Netflix, can learn about this cool (annual?) event. (The National Senior Games are held every two years (2019 is in Albuquerque!) -Ed.)

But it’s existence is a fact, not an idea. Sure sure, maybe Ellen was going to get to the actual IDEA of what she was pitching in relation to the Geri Olympics. (And God I’m slow sometimes, I thought Geri was a person the event had been named after. But it probably is actually short for geriatric. Yeah? GAWDDAMMIT.)

But, oh yeah, ideas. Ideas are hard, dear reader. I’ve been lucky enough to pay rent for around 13 years as a writer. And I feel like I know less about what constitutes an idea today than I did when I was younger, thinner and more brazen. So, on the one hand, it always chips my cud when someone says they have an idea, and it turns out they just have a fact or an execution (doing an Instagram video does not an idea make.) On the other hand, bringing ideas to life means looking for what could work in the ideas that are conveyed to you — not what can’t, or won’t.

In an ideal creative world, Lucy Liu’s job would be to see the potential in what her (hopefully) diverse set of thinkers brings to the table. That builds trust. Which is hard as hell to forge between people and harder still to maintain and protect. But trust is the infrastructure required for great work to be shepherded into the world. Which, subsequently, is why we live in a world brimming with garbage.

As mentioned we’re now back with Taye Diggs and Cameron. Who are inside. The Office.

Cameron, like Ellen, is giving his boss a similar accelerated rundown of to-dos which ALSO Trojan-horses some info to us – Taye Diggs is in the midst of a DIVORCE!?! Hooo-WEEE. It’s like I’m watching some gum-dang Shakespeare show or some such. “Wherefore art though Romeo, indeed.”

Amongst the to-dos, Cameron’s boss asks if he will tell his soon-to-be ex-wife that she can light herself on fire. Yowza.

The space they are in is interesting ... as from one angle, it appears to be a lobby:

Where the reverse makes it seem to be:

Another type of lobby?

But no, this is the mighty office of Cameron’s boss. Complete with small desk ... ample seating and garbage can without liner (power move!).

Don’t get much time to fall down that rabbit hole though, because Taye Diggs comes up, and probably casts shade upon, his son’s science fair project.

It’s a lemon battery. That’s a real thing. And wouldn’t it be a better world if all our batteries had a natural, lemon scent.

Cameron does his best to cheerlead for this project (which does sort of just look like four lemons placed on some paper), by saying it’s a clever play on when life gives you lemons, you make a lemon battery. (Narrator: It isn’t.) But Taye Diggs isn’t going for it.

When people aren’t looking at him, Cameron makes a lot of faces. It feels like he’s channeling a little Ryan Reynolds vibe. So, we got Cameron from Ferris Bueller channeling Ryan Reynolds while Ellen Page is pitching the Geri Olympics to Lucy Liu. Quite the set (it) up indeed …

Cameron follows Taye Diggs into yet ANOTHER office, which I think has turned out to be his ACTUAL office. No way to tell what the garbage can situation is in here. Sorry.

Look out, though. Taye Diggs sits down and promptly asks where his DINNER IS AT!???!?!?!?!

!!!

Whaaaat? But wait. Cameron wants to make sure his boss really wants dinner ...

…

…

Meanwhile, Ellen is outside her office with the food delivery guy. It’s not going well. Because it’s “cash only.” Odd we didn’t know that before. (I’m looking at you script …)

Ellen Page is proving unable to improvise her way out of her “cash only” situation. (Cash, she has none).

But hold up, who’s coming out of the very same building (screaming all the while into his phone at a grocery store employee about their failure to stock saffron-infused Kobe Beef ... cooked medium rare)?

Cameron hears Ellen failing to have cash only to pay for the food.

He quickly puts his phone away (the one he threw away earlier?) and runs up to ask the food guy whose food he’s holding.

Dude … she’s right there.

Food Guy don’t care though. Because if Cameron has thirty-one dollars and thirty-two cents, it’s all his.

Cameron has cash. He has so much cash, Cameron says, and begins rifling through his wallet.

Ellen calmly explains why she needs her food and what her boss will do to her if she doesn’t get it.

Ellen, changing strategies, asks Cameron if she can borrow some money. This is Cameron’s chance to shrug off the Ryan Reynold’s snarky snark and show that, despite everything we’ve seen of him to date, beneath it all, he really is a decent human being (since, you know, it really helps if the leads in your rom-com are likable people).

Instead of lending Ellen the thirty-one dollars and thirty-two cents, he explains that if he doesn’t get the food up to HIS boss, that he’ll meet the same fate that Ellen faces (termination with extreme prejudice).

Ellen goes on the offensive here, countering that because Cameron is (obviously?) a lacrosse stick–carrying, frat boy douchebag, he’ll continue to fail upward while she suffers career fallout.

She needs that food, Food Man.

Unmoved like the lacrosse stick man he is, Cameron hands Food Man some bills. “Thirty-two dollars. Keep the change,” he says.

I agree with Food Man here who, post eye-roll, turns and literally struts out of the movie.

Ellen ain’t going down without a fight. And by fight, I mean more panicked reasoning with Cameron.

Literally chasing him down, Ellen explains that Cameron is actually holding two dinners (one being Ellen’s, one being Lucy Liu’s). They could, please, split them, so each boss could get something. It isn’t until Ellen botches a metaphor relating to DEFCON levels that Cameron seems to muster up some pity for her.

“What are the meals?” he asks grudgingly, before making sure we’re still watching the movie.

We are Cameron. We are.

Ellen offers Ryan the burger so she can take the truffle mac and cheese.

Problem: Ryan can’t take his boss a plain burger. His boss is a man of taste. Hah! Oops. I just started calling him Ryan. The Reynolds is strong with this one.

Cam-er-on.

(Cameron. Cameron. Cameron.)

Don’t worry! I got it back man ...

Cameron’s boss is man of taste.

So, Ellen improvises. Poorly. She places both meals down on the (New York City) ground, both of which must be nearly Minnesota-cold by now. Opening both, she plops a wad of the mac and cheese on top of the hamburger. And then puts a piece of kale on it. And says we have ourselves an award-worthy truffle cheeseburger ... with kale.

What the hell, Ellen? That’s straight-up gross. Especially since she gets some of the mac on the ground during the transfer. It all looks coagulated, guh. At first, I’m thinking Cameron’s boss will never go for this. But, over the course of 5 minutes of research, I realize this combo could be considered quite glamorous to some.

So maybe I’m out of my depth here.

Ellen tries to claim the pickle for her own dinner. But Rya ... Cameron doth protest, saying he’s not giving his boss a truffle cheeseburger without a pickle. It’s a mac and cheese burger dude. Whatever …

Cameron puts the cover back on the burger and walks off. Ellen throws the dirty spoon in the dirty bag and picks her dish off the dirty ground and I go off to take a shower.

As they both walk back into the office, Ryan …

CAMERON! DAMMIT!

Sorry. So sorry. I swear. Honest mistakes here.

As C-A-M-E-R-O-N walks back into the office with Ellen in tow, he explains how he expects to be paid back tomorrow. That’s with 8% interest and liquidity preference.

That’s actually bad news for Cameron. Because, in Man, Economy, and State (1962), Murray Rothbard argues that the liquidity preference theory of interest suffers from a fallacy of mutual determination. Keynes alleges that the rate of interest is determined by liquidity preference. In practice, however, Keynes treats the rate of interest as determining liquidity preference.

Rothbard states "The Keynesians therefore treat the rate of interest, not as they believe they do — as determined by liquidity preference — but rather as some sort of mysterious and unexplained force imposing itself on the other elements of the economic system."[3]

That, and the script supervisor forgot to tell Cameron to put the cover back on his truffle cheeseburger (with pickle) in this scene.

Ellen counters by admitting she steals her toilet paper from the office bathroom as a means of establishing why she is not the type of person who can afford to pay interest.

I ... just ... let’s just keep things moving here, friends …

This Thin Man–worthy tit-for-tat evolves into proper dueling-elevator bon mottery (complete with return of quirky music underscoring):

Cameron: [paraphrased] Well, you should be part of a socioeconomic class that affords you the privilege to carry cash on you at all times …

Ellen: [paraphrased] Well, you should make sure your head isn’t so far up your ass you can’t tell day from night when needing to produce dinner for your man of taste ...

CAMERON: [paraphrased] That pickle from 10 seconds ago? I misled you in regards to my intentions toward it. I will now consume it in front of you and may not even enjoy doing so.

JBTF10: Cover ...