Recluse:

Casting around for a successful movie to illustrate what I think your logline needs, I offer for your consideration the movie “The Wedding Crashers”.

The movie is about two professional divorce mediators who crash weddings with bogus identities in order to pick up women for one night stands. This is similar to your duo who crash the jet set with bogus identities in order to swindle them.

And in both stories the characters have an initial, Act 1, objective goal — and in both cases it’s the wrong goal.

In “The Wedding Crashers” the initial objective goal is motivated by the character flaw: their profession has made them cynical about marriage; they are afraid to make themselves emotionally vulnerable by taking a risk for love.

But crashing weddings while avoiding emotional commitment is not the plot for the movie — it is only the setup of the initial situation that illustrates the character flaw.

The plot of “Wedding Crashers” — the inciting incident — kicks into gear when one of the dudes falls in love with a woman he meets while crashing a wedding. This is a direct challenge to his character flaw. And it compels the character to a new objective goal which becomes the plot for the rest of the movie.

Now then. I don’t know what you conceive as the fundamental character flaw of our duplicitous duo, but whatever it is, the inciting incident needs to directly attack it. The inciting incident of your story needs to be the catalyst for the character arc; it initiates the dramatic process, forces the duo (at least one of them) to adopt a new objective goal. An objective goal that will drive the plot.

And that objective goal needs to be stated in the logline.

So what character flaw is attacked when the guy’s ex shows up? And what must he do about it — what becomes his objective goal?

As I’ve said before, I think you have?most of the ingredients for an entertaining movie — interesting characters in an interesting situation. ?Now you need a recipe — a plot — to properly combine and bake them into a successful script.

fwiw