Subv🦋erting the romcom with a fallin𝕴g-out-of-love story is a bit old hat.

Many have tried; many have failed.

Celeste & Jesse Forever also tries and fails, but entertains along the w🅠ay.

Rashida Jones (who co-writes) plays Celeste, ꦿa proper grown-up with a highflying job, who was once married to slacker Jesse (A༒ndy Samberg).

They’re recently divorced, not that you’d know it by the way they make goo-goo eyes at each other. Celeste and Jesse are aꦉn irritating pair; self-indulgent, gabby yup🅰pies, who should really just shut up and kiss.

Some o🧜f this is intentionaꦯl, but an additional 10 per cent of the irritation results from cutesy jokes that don’t work.

This is a romcom withou👍t the ‘rom’, but also, lar𝓰gely, without the ‘com’.

Things improve when a genuine obstacle to Jesse and Celeste’s hitherto tediously inevitable reunion appears, morphing the film into a vision of LA ennui a la Greenberg , Passenger Side or the upcoming Nobody Walks .

But the performances are a mixed bag. Elijah Wood is awkward as the gay BFF, and as for Saturday Night Live ’s bright young hope? It’s hard to tell where Samberg&rsquꩲo;s feckless character ends and his feckless performance begins.

But Celeste & Jesse is redeemed by the first half of the equation. Celeste has reaไl personality flaws that, unlike a tendency to adorably spill lattes over eligible bachelors, make for a perceptively drawn character arc.

But none of it would work🌌 if Rashida Jones wasn’t such a charming actress. In a career that’s consisted of underwritten girlfriend parts, Celeste is a role in which she can stretch and bend.

But then again, she did co-write it herself.