Wesley (Nasim Pedrad) has had a miserable year. Multiple potential jobs have fallen through, suitors have turned out to be flaky, and unappealing and her closest personal possessions are slowly slipping through her fingers. Her best friends, Brooke (Anna Camp) and Kaylie (Sarah Burns) do their best to encourage her and follow her down some strange metaphorical alleys in order to find her happiness, but have ultimately failed. However, one day, Wesley meets Jared (Robbie Amell), and things start looking up. When Wesley accidentally sends a horrific email to Jared, her and her friends set out on an unprecedented journey to delete it before it’s opened and read. As the three Desperados work together to accomplish their collective goal, they will learn endless lessons about themselves and the people they care about, making this trip more successful than they could have ever imagined.
Emotion is incredibly necessary in film, as it allows viewers a way to connect with the story, characters, etc. The almost complete absence of emotion in Desperados is what makes the film so difficult to appreciate. None of the leads are emotionally gripping in any way, and it feels like LP (director), Ellen Rapaport (writer), and the cast are trying entirely too hard to reach the audience in a number of ways. Everything throughout the course of the film feels forced and unnatural. Furthermore, as the story unravels the characters fall further and further from relatability, leaving them open to nothing more than criticism and disgust.
With the nearly one-dimensional characters, one can only hope that the story saves Desperados. Sadly, this is not the case. Similar to the characters, the story is flat, unappealing and ultimately uneventful. The plotline is entirely too simplistic, derivative of nearly every other chick flick, and too emotionally inept to demand serious attention. Within minutes of the film beginning the eventual revelations that were to come became very apparent. Rapaport and LP’s inability to create any mystery, any twists and turns, or any excitement adds to the monotony of the characters and bogs down an already uneventful film.
Desperados, with its well-known cast, two of whom worked very closely with one another in the past, on paper, looks like it has the potential to be a hit. However, as the story unfolds and the characters prove to be quite unrelatable, everything that the film promises to be takes a backseat to the film’s overwhelming underdevelopment. The one thing that Desperados has going for it is the attractive cast. While it’s not always the best idea to base a film strictly on the attractiveness of the cast, however, when actors such as Pedrad, Amell, and Camp lead the insanely boring story, their looks ends up being the most appealing aspect of the entire endeavor. Sadly, with this being the most attractive (pun intended) aspect of the entire film, the film is likely to face some backlash and financial struggles.
Directed by LP. Written by Ellen Rapaport. Starring Nasim Pedrad, Anna Camp, Lamorne Morris, Sarah Burns, Robbie Amell, etc.
⭐⭐⭐⭐/10
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