Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: a conventional yuppie who, if you look at him from the right angle, reveals a streak of disaffection with his life bumps into a free-spirited young woman. She introduces him to the wild side of life, and they embark on a whirlwind romance. All together now: can you say “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”?

If you rolled your eyes at this, rest assured: that was pretty much my first reaction to Jonathan Demme’s Something Wild – so much so that after about half an hour I ejected the Blu-ray and watched something else instead. For those first 20-30 minutes, I felt more and more that I really didn’t need yet another take on that particular well-worn cliché. Charlie Driggs (Jeff Daniels) and Lulu (Melanie Griffith), as she calls herself to begin with, weren’t endearing to me: I found them and their idea of what breaking free from convention looked like grating. It’s one thing to watch teenagers who believe they’re the first ever to break free from the bonds of social mores; it’s quite another to watch two supposedly grown-up people behaving like those teenagers. There’s something to it that is smug and self-satisfied and, frankly, a bit boring.

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