I first became aware of this… product (yeah, it’s gonna be one of those reviews, strap in) when a trailer for it showed up during a preview screening I went to for FilmInk. I had two immediate reactions to it: “But why, though?” and “There’s no way this is a real movie”. Yep, we have another Boss Baby situation, where it feels like I need to be convinced that the film I’m looking at even exists in the first place. It’s a testament to just how much raw cliché and sheer bewilderment was compressed into a single point to create that trailer. And yeah, now that I’ve sat through the whole thing, I can definitely confirm that it exists… although that just raises more questions.
For as contrived as a lot of rom-coms end up being by design, as there’s only so many different variations on the same idea (ditto for most genres), this one really stands out in all the worst ways. After tragically losing her boyfriend, children’s book author Mira (Priyanka Chopra Jones) tries to get through her grief by texting her late boyfriend’s phone number… which is now registered to journalist Rob (Sam Heughan). Blah blah blah, they end up meeting, blah blah blah, artificial tension because this is a relationship built on a lie, blah blah blah, Celine Dion.
The chemistry between Chopra Jones and Heughan is… I mean, they sure seem cozy together in some scenes, but as a love that’s supposed to teach one party to love again (such clever, many nuance) and the other to love at all, it’s incredibly bland and uninteresting. Putting aside the sketchiness of how their courtship started, their performances aren’t nearly enough to get past how tired and listless and occasionally batshit-and-not-in-the-fun-way their words are.
Then again, they are also the only actors here who don’t sound out-of-place. It is immensely distracting to see so many British actors in the supporting cast sporting plainly-obvious American accents, with parts of the filming taking in London, when the story is supposed to be set in New York City. Y’know, because we’re suffering a serious drought of rom-coms set in that one city.
And then there’s Celine herself, and it’s here where the film genuinely started to get on my nerves. Now, Celine herself probably works the best out of every on-screen presence, playing a fictionalised version of herself who Rob ends up being interviewed by and gives some love advice. With how much of her music and her life story (the death of René Angélil is brought up to try and add texture to the fictional story being presented) is in here, it seems to exist solely as a promotional opportunity for her. An awfully defensive bit of promo at that, what with Rob talking about not being that into her music, and her along with the rest of the film getting all uppity about how that’s just because his heart is so deprived of love that he doesn’t “get it”. To quote the film, word for word, “Slowly, I began to realise that Celine was right. I couldn’t hear the music, because I had given up on love…”
Now… I could get into how this kind of critical defence is a sure-fire way to piss me off, no matter who the subject of that criticism is, as does a lot of these half-arsed 'skill issue' talking points. Or I could provide a better defence and get into how, as I’ve explained in reviews past, sometimes my own opinions on art can change if I go through a certain life event, and my perspective on romance films is likely part of that equation.
But instead, I’m going to point out the more obvious problem with this whole thing: Why is direct experience required to appreciate art about that experience? Especially an experience that has as many volumes of songs devoted to it as love? Like, I get it, Rob is a sad boi, but the way they frame his initial disinterest in Celine’s music as some kind of personal fault is… off-putting, to say the least. Hell, if the film’s logic made any sense, then it’s basically admitting that its own existence is doomed to failure. Chances are, very few potential viewers will have accidentally texted someone while trying to text their dead lover. Good art is able to invoke an emotional response regardless of what the audience brings into it beforehand; unless I have some repressed memory of escaping North Korea to explain how much Beyond Utopia affected me, you’re talking bollocks, Jim Strouse.
Not that this film is even worth the amount of thought required to even be put off by such an assertion; it’s just that that’s the only even vaguely interesting thing about this whole mess. It’s a manipulative little nothing of a ‘love story’ that seems far less interested in making any emotional impact, and more in advertising wherever Celine Dion’s next concert tour will be. The amount of naked cynicism in this is frankly embarrassing, and even for die-hard fans of Celine’s music, I can’t see a single reason to check this out. Cop the soundtrack if you must (although personally, I didn't hear much worth revisiting), but otherwise, give everyone involved in this the best Christmas present there is and just ignore that this even happened.
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