Love at First Sight
I understand. I know how difficult it is to write contemporary romance. They’re beloved by audiences, but finding a plausible reason why the couple doesn’t just fall in love and go straight to happily ever after gets harder and harder every year. It’s really tough these days to keep them apart for 70 minutes or so in a way that’s interesting enough to be worthy of our time but not too convoluted for us to invest in their relationship as relatable yet aspirational lovers. The old standbys some lie or misunderstanding, or literal or symbolic societal strictures (Broadway’s longest running hit until “Oklahoma!” was “Abie’s Irish Rose,” about a Jewish man who wants to marry his Catholic girlfriend) won’t work when nobody actually races through traffic to stop someone from getting on an airplane because we all have cellphones.
But unfortunately, “Love at First Sight” isn’t even as good as one of those cellphones whose batteries die inconveniently fast, and its dull script never plants enough evidence for us to believe that these two people are destined for each other or care about how they might get together.
“This is not a story about love,” narrator Jameela Jamil informs us. “It is a story about fate And statistics.” That’s true only in the sense that lots of numbers get thrown around here, and one of the main characters self identifies as a “maths geek” (he’s British). There is also, per the title, a couple who feel an immediate attraction when they meet in an airport terminal, but banter plus a couple exchanged confidences do not equal love, no matter how many pop songs you stuff into your soundtrack.
We see Hadley (Haley Lu Richardson) racing through JFK Airport trying to catch a plane to London on Dec. 20 which our narrator tells us is the airport’s busiest day of the year, with over 193,000 passengers arriving and departing, causing an average check-in delay of 23 minutes and a maximum security wait time of 117 minutes; so she misses her flight by four minutes but has to wait for the next one because it’s Christmas Eve. While waiting, she looks for a place to charge her phone and that’s where she meets Oliver (Ben Hardy), who is studying yes statistics and data science at Yale. He gallantly offers her his charger, she responds, “Sorry, I don’t share electronics until the third date.” He tells her his name, she says, “Like Oliver Twist.” He replies wryly, “And they say Americans are uncultured.” They share some airport food before racing to board the plane where he gets bumped up to business class (the very next seat!) because his seat belt is broken which would be completely unrealistic if we hadn’t already seen that our flight attendant is none other than our narrator herself. They have a “cheesy rom-com” together before bedtime: She’ll only watch if there’s a happy ending; he tells her she’s dangerous because he finds himself telling her the truth about himself. What we will learn later when it finally matters to anyone or anything in this world is that he isn’t.
We are aware of the fact that they have a very strong romantic connection because the movie tells us that. Where do you think his phone number goes though when he gives it to her? Yes, into that very unreliable phone. So maybe his studies of statistics and probability aren’t too comprehensive especially once you realize that they didn’t even exchange last names. The rest of the movie is spent with them trying to find each other in one of the largest cities in the world.
Now, about fate. The narrator says something along the lines of “Fate can only be fate if we decide want it to be.” I have no idea what that means, but I do know that fate does not include an all knowing statistics-spouting narrator who magically appears multiple times throughout to nudge our lovebirds onto their next move. There’s also a completely unnecessary “rewind” of footage to show us another angle on what happened before and wait for it a makeover scene as our heroine throws on her bridesmaid outfit fresh off a transatlantic flight.
The ridiculously talented Richardson does her best with an incredibly underwritten character. Her complicated feelings about her father (a game Rob Delaney) marrying a woman she’s never met are just there so she has something to talk about. Same goes for Hardy, who is also given one over-arching characteristic. He thinks, with enough data, he will never be taken by surprise. Oliver has an even tougher time with his parents, played by Sally Phillips and Dexter Fletcher, whose bittersweet Shakespeare costume party offers up charming costumes from designer Kirsty Halliday. If real-life Hadley and Oliver wanted a cheesy rom-com with a happy ending to watch on a plane somewhere down the line I hope they find better than “Love at First Sight.”
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