Online dating has taken the world by storm. Sites like Plenty of Fish and Tinder have been downloaded by more than 107 million people, and numbers are rising. Love, Guaranteed is the newest dating app, one that ensures each user finds love before the thousandth date. Nick Evans (Damon Wayans Jr.) has been on 986 dates and is closing in on the Love, Guaranteed threshold and has determined that his lack of love warrants filing a lawsuit against the site and its founder, Tamara Taylor (Heather Graham). Nick teams up with young, ambitious lawyer, Susan Whitaker (Rachael Leigh Cook) to take on one of the biggest companies in Seattle, and their journey will be anything but orthodox.
Love, Guaranteed looks exactly like your standard chick flick, so, why did I decide to watch the Netflix original film? Well, Damon Wayans Jr. has proven himself time and time again to have gained some of his father’s (Damon Wayans) comedic prowess and has managed to construct quite the following. I hoped that Wayans Jr. would shine and his ability to fill the screen and better those around would strengthen Love, Guaranteed and make it something more than the usual romcom. However, as chick flicks usually are, they are predictable, and while I had hoped for something better, Love, Guaranteed was exactly what I had expected: cheesy and void of any true adventure.
Films need adventure, something that will allow viewers to remain engaged throughout. That might be a plot twist, an emotional draw, or something else entirely, but that sense of adventure is essential to a film’s success. Recently I saw just a portion of the Love, Guaranteed trailer, and while it does a fair job of hiding what is to come by the end of the film, I, in just thirty seconds of the trailer, figured out the ending. Should you call me Nostradamus, certainly not. I’m not a prophet and I don’t have the ability to read minds. What I had was a film that lacked any vigor or excitement, a film that was so vanilla in its approach that it was impossible not to see where it was headed.
Wayans Jr.’s charisma isn’t enough to save Love, Guaranteed from failing. He has an energy to him that resonates with viewers, but with literally every other aspect of the film being so dull, he becomes bogged down and ineffective. Opposite Wayans Jr. the romcom regular, Cook. She fits this cookie-cutter mold of the female protagonist from Hallmark films that has grown tired and fails to reach a wide range of viewers. While she clearly possesses the ability to entertain, her role in Love, Guaranteed is, to say the least, exaggerated. Her highs are over the top and her lows as if she had just arrived in the pit of despair. There is little balance in her performance and it feels, at times, to be slightly erratic. While she struggles to convey emotion appropriately, viewers lose interest in what transpires throughout the course of Susan’s journey.
Like the rest of the film, Cook’s acting and Susan’s story fail to deliver genuine emotion or excitement, and Love, Guaranteed fails as a result. The talented Wayans Jr. is incapable of saving this film as his role, similar to the rest of the film, seems poorly written. There is nothing gripping about the story as every aspect of it is predictable and unoriginal. Love, Guaranteed is a typical chick flick, no more, no less.
Directed by Mark Steven Johnson.
Written by Elizabeth Hackett & Hilary Galanoy.
Starring Rachael Leigh Cook, Damon Wayans Jr., Heather Graham, Caitlin Howden, Sean Amsing, Lisa Durupt, etc.
⭐⭐⭐½/10
Comentários