Right off the top, the mediocre indie dramedy Seeing Other People asks viewers to buy an arrangement that seems beyond the milquetoast limitations of a happily engaged young couple. Citing her woeful inexperience and a sex life gone stale, Julianne Nicholson forces fiancé Jay Mohr into an experiment that frees them up to sleep with strangers in the months leading up their wedding day. She figures that a few meaningless affairs will get their relationship out of its rut and even spice up their sex lives, so long as they remain mature, honest, and open about their experiences. It doesn't take a crystal ball to see the obvious repercussions of this decision, yet the film waits until the final reel to honor its irrationality with the absurdist treatment it deserves.
"I just wanted to feel worthless and degraded and repulsive," Nicholson explains at the film's comedic high point, when even she has lost track of why she and Mohr sabotaged a perfectly healthy relationship. By then, the action has finally shifted into the stops-out bedroom farce it should have been from the beginning, but co-writer/director Wally Wolodarsky (Coldblooded) spends the early sections muddled in a thin West Coast variation on Woody Allen's Husbands And Wives (or Breaking The Waves, for that matter). A former writer for The Simpsons, Wolodarsky could have used some of that show's high energy and satirical bent, but he's grounded instead by the predictable consequences of a committed couple sowing their wild oats.
An overqualified ensemble of familiar TV faces—including Lauren Graham (Gilmore Girls), Josh Charles (Sports Night), and Andy Richter—fill out the densely plotted story, which tries too hard to observe the mores of a cross-section of Angelenos. In spite of her pledge to sleep with as many men as possible, Nicholson settles for a long affair with hunky contractor Matthew Davis, while the initially reluctant Mohr carries on the spirit of their original agreement and plays the field. At first, the flings renew their dormant sex life, but soon the two are consumed by jealousy, one-upmanship, and an impulse to hurt each other.
As a counterpoint to Mohr and Nicholson, Wolodarsky wastes time on a superfluous subplot about Richter's courtship of a divorcée (Helen Slater) and her bitter young son, perhaps to show how sane people build a relationship. If Wolodarsky's lifeless compositions and pacing weren't enough to suck the wind out of his comedy, then the bland earnestness of these scenes certainly do the trick. Seeing Other People eventually finds its rhythm with late flashes of dark humor and bedroom hijinks, but it takes too much time to get there.