LOVE ACCIDENTALLY

I wrote recently of Thor: Love and Thunder that it included all of the typical rom-com tropes.

Watching Love Accidentally made me realise just how wrong I was.

Love Accidentally makes Thor: Love and Thunder look subtle. It feels like it the writer and director have taken every rom-com made between 2000 and 2005, put them in a sack, smacked the audience round the head with it, and then made a film based out of what spilled out. At one point Brenda Songs Alexa says the line “That is such a cliché” which, really, is all the review you need.

From the plinky plonky pop soundtrack - and, yes, that is a technical term - , to the two-dimensional best friends. Even the promotional poster and the name of the film, it is a throwback in every conceivable way.

Lets first talk about the meet cute. Now, I will concede that a meet cute has to be taken with a pinch of salt at the best of times. They are almost always contrived and require characters to behave in ways that no logical human being ever would.

The meet cute here though is something else. The level of contrivance is off the scales and, even as someone who is prepared to forgive a rom-com almost anything, I found it hard to believe.

The meet cute then develops into the standard will they / won’t they - which is far more a case of when rather than will - which lumbers around from set piece to set piece before arriving at its inevitable destination.

Next, the characters - At one point, not knowing they are talking to each other Jason and Alexa decide to refer to each other as Him and Her, and at which point, why am I even here, because that is a far more succinct, and damning, review than I could ever give it.

There is absolutely no depth to the characters. They are rom-com templates that nobody has bothered to colour in. She is a driven career woman, eagerly anticipating her boyfriend popping the question. He is the ladies man, who can’t handle commitment, but who may have hidden depths.

These are starting points, but the film tries in vain to present them as fully fleshed out characters

Despite the fact that I have only just watched it I had to google his name. And the only reason I remembered Hers is because every time someone said it it set my Alexa off.

Brenda Song and Aaron O’Connell do have some decent chemistry, however the film doesn’t utilise this, instead having most of their interactions happen over text. It essentially hamstrings itself with its own premise, taking the one thing it had in its favour and writing it out.

There are some vague attempts at adding tension to proceedings. Both of them refer to money issues, though this is never anything more than a failed attempt at character development, and there is a “who will get the big contract” plot. Unfortunately it is pretty clear from the get go where Love Accidentally is going to go, meaning that neither the journey or the destination is particularly entertaining.

What Love Accidentally does have going for it, is an element of the nostalgia factor. It is like distilling all of your favourite classic rom-coms into one sub-90 minute compilation. It loses all of the emotional stakes, but leaves you with a vague feeling of something you recognise. Like going to see a tribute band over the real thing.

This isn’t a bad thing per se, it promises little and delivers on that promise. How much you enjoy it will depend solely on your tolerance level for twenty year old rom-coms.

Love Accidentally is an easy watch, which may offer some viewers a welcome bit of nostalgic escapism. But it isn’t good. Not on any level.