Rachael Leigh Cook and Damon Wayans Jr are a definite charming few in a ridiculous but mostly entertaining intimate comedy
Rachael Leigh Cook and Damon Wayans Jr celebrity in like Guaranteed, a movie that simply about fits the brief. Photograph: Netflix
A cursory look into Netflix’s daily top ten informs us a great number of revealing things, chief among them that quality, or absence thereof, does not have any bearing on viewership, but additionally, further along the list is definitely an underlined reminder that nostalgia nevertheless rules. It is not only any nostalgia however a certain sort that transports thirtysomething millennials returning to their teenage years, as evidenced because of the current success of Clueless or Jurassic Park or Moesha or Friends, comfortable access to movies and shows most of us needed to struggle for back within the time.
It’s filtered right through to their initial content strategy too, may it be rebooting The Babysitters Club, casting Jennifer Aniston in Murder Mystery or Sandra Bullock in Bird Box or Christina Milian in Falling Inn prefer, the latter now leading to a different fallen star headlining her very own low-budget rom-com through the exact same writing duo of Hilary Galanoy and Elizabeth Hackett. This time it’s She’s All That’s “ugly” duckling Rachael Leigh Cook, whose celebrity dimmed instead fast after her Sixpence None the Richer-soundtracked breakout with a sequence of commercial disappointments (RIP Josie as well as the Pussycats). But Cook is a face that will prove instantly recognisable still to a generation whom feigned shock whenever she became popular her spectacles for Freddie Prinze Jr and ended up being like, actually clearly nevertheless appealing, and also have wondered where she’s been from the time.
She stars as moralistic but hard-up attorney Susan who https://datingrating.net/cupid-review assumes on situations she thinks in but struggles in order to make ends fulfill, driving a (stylishly) scrappy old automobile with a Tiffany record stuck in the cassette player. But one morning her luck shifts whenever handsome complete complete complete complete stranger Nick (Damon Wayans Jr) asks her to accept a silly appropriate battle. He’s been utilizing dating app Love Guaranteed now for some time and he wants Susan to fight their claim that members will find love by date 1,000 as he reaches date 986. And you will probably imagine where this really is going.
This is a slightly above average Lifetime-level piece of fluff that also employs a director, who like his leading lady, has seen better career days like Galanoy and Hackett’s New Zealand-set renovation rom-com Falling Inn Love. For the reason that movie it had been Cruel Intentions’ Roger Kumble slumming it and also this time, it is Daredevil’s Mark Steven Johnson who a somewhat better work at making their Netflix paycheque project feel just like it can be seen from the silver screen. It’s a slick and confection that is glossy contains a small number of handsome shots that elevates it simply over the suprisingly low club Netflix has set for it self (an external pan back into comparison Cook’s character alone with wine across the street to her sister’s happy household is unusually impressive). It’s additionally passably entertaining, a silly and forgettable but diversion that is mostly charming should see other ’90s has-beens clamouring because of their very very very very very own celebrity cars.
There’s a half-hearted effort right here to skewer or at last gently poke at dating app culture plus it’s a ripe area uneasily full of organizations luring singletons in aided by the vow of love yet finally perhaps perhaps maybe perhaps perhaps perhaps not wanting them to suit up and simply simply simply simply just take their company away. But like a number of other movies or implies that delve into comparable territory, Galanoy and Hackett count on the weary label of digital courtship dominated by one-note one-joke whackjobs, basing the thought of all of it on a person’s that is married fear of exactly what a Tinder date would really end up like. Better writers, such as for instance Issa Rae and Aziz Ansari, also have fallen foul for this and thus it will be naive to anticipate far better here however it continues to be a tiring, simplistic distillation of an even more complex globe and in appreciate Guaranteed, the bad dates get boring real fast.
Cook is a casino game lead though, enthusiastically tossing by by by by herself to the formula she faces, and there’s a chemistry that is natural Wayans Jr, a charismatic star whom should really be cropping up in far larger tasks than this. It is weirdly the next Netflix summer time comedy to haul down Heather Graham whilst the outsized cameo that is comic weird because she’s maybe maybe maybe maybe maybe not an star who’s particularly adept at comedy and somehow her presence listed here is much more embarrassing than it had been in Desperados, quite the feat.
There won’t be many audiences who’ll keep in mind it by this time around month that is next within its quick running time, it simply about fits the brief, zipping along at rate buoyed because of the charm of the leads, like nearly guaranteed in full alternatively.
Prefer Guaranteed is present now on Netflix
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