Together Together: Ed Helms and Patti Harrison mesh in a bittersweet dance between a wannabe single dad and a surrogate mom

By Jim Slotek

Rating: B-plus

Experts usually counsel maintaining some boundaries between prospective adoptive parents and surrogate birth mothers. To understand why, imagine if the bittersweet and warmly funny Together Together played out differently.

The film, written and directed by Nikole Beckwith, stars Ed Helms as Matt, a lonely late fortysomething app-designer who sees becoming a single dad as a way to give his life purpose. In the first scene, we meet him interviewing a twentysomething barista named Anna (Patti Harrison), and asking her questions like, “What is the worst thing you’ve ever done?”

Ed Helms and Patti Harrison in Together Together

Among the applicants, Anna turns out to be the “winner,” as it were. Having previously gotten pregnant as a teen and given the baby up for adoption, she already has experience in letting go of a child for someone else’s happiness. The money is “just karma.”

Few comic actors play “fretting guy” as well as Helms, so it’s predictable that he becomes a micro-managing expectant father, showing up at her work, bringing her “pregnant tea” and nagging her over her diet choices.

The movie happens because the seemingly more grounded Anna finds an intriguing and oddly kindred spirit in Matt (he introduces her to Friends, and they watch all 10 seasons during the gestation).

If they didn’t hit it off, well, that would make Matt a stalker. And you could just as easily envision Together Together as a psychological horror movie.

But they do hit it off, to the point that Anna eventually moves into Matt’s house, the better for him to keep an eye on her condition. (Anna is not oblivious to the inappropriateness of this move, but at a certain point, the only real friend either one seems to have is the other).

PROUDLY SUPPORTS ORIGINAL-CIN

Normalizing this relationship, often through other people’s eyes, is at the root of most of the movie’s humour and sometime pathos.

It gives a lot of minor characters terrific reaction moments. These include Tig Notaro as their counsellor, Julio Torres as Anna’s disapproving gay pal, and especially Sufe Bradshaw as an exasperated ultrasound technician having to listen to them squabble over Anna’s decision to continue having sex with guys - this while they listen for the baby’s heartbeat). 

A baby shower for Matt, with fellow Gen X guests delightedly referring to Anna to her face as “the surrogate” is alternately funny and heartbreaking.

Hovering over Together Together is the expectation that two people who enjoy each other’s company as much as Matt and Anna do will eventually end up together. Beckwith plays with this trope nicely. “You’ve been watching too many Woody Allen movies,” Anna says when Matt notices that she always says “Ew, no,” when people ask if they’re a couple.

Though the blockbuster The Hangover and its sequels may end up carved on his tombstone, Helms has made quieter, deeper, everyman movies that are worth watching (2011’s Cedar Rapids is a favourite of mine). He seems at home playing a repressed guy playing normal in a world where he doesn’t quite fit. And the magnetic Harrison is a revelation as Anna, skillfully revealing in layers Anna’s vulnerability, her personality and past, and prodding Matt to reveal his. 

Together Together. Written and directed by Nikole Beckwith. Stars Ed Helms, Patti Harrison and Tig Notaro. Now available On Demand.