Maya Angelou said something along the lines of “People won’t remember what you said, they won’t won’t remember what you did, they’ll remember how you made them feel”. Sometimes, you just need to feel a movie. Welcome to the RomCom Roundup.
Yeah, so:
Watching hot people fall in love is a pastime reserved for the rainiest of weekend afternoon in sweatpants with a lovely tea that goes tepid as soon as the drama ramps up, it does get a little addictive at certain points in your life, doesn’t it?
You find yourself unwilling to believe that Farhan Akhtar’s character in Karthik calling Karthik finds himself unappealing, and you also heavily empathise with him being deeply attractive to Deepika Padukone as Shonali, because…yeah it’s Deepika Padukone. You similarly empathise with Bridget Jones as she sings and interpretively dances to the entirety of Celine Dion’s “All By Myself” during the opening credits of the first “Bridget Jones’ Diary” movie.
Last weekend, armed with a bag of salted peanuts and a glass of Malbec, I got my fix.
Moonshot is HBO Max’s likely middle finger at Netflix taking Lana Condor and Cole Sprouse from their extremely popular teen movie and TV show respectively and dropping them into a romcom that is so cute, you almost forget how formulaic it is but also you’re not watching it for the shining artistry of it all, are you?
Sophie (Condor) starts out completely hating Walt (Sprouse), and they meet sometime later, with Walt holding on to his wide-eyed optimism by a thread and Sophie having everything he could want, namely, a ticket to Mars. Walt believes that the Mars colonisation mission is where he belongs, although his 37 rejections from the program beg to differ. Sophie has the money to get to mars and a perfect boyfriend with a perfect life waiting for her there.
Walt, using his undeniable wit and charm gets on the same ship as her as a stowaway, with the requisite antics and unnecessary lies giving you the ‘com’ in rom-com. In the days it takes them to get to Mars, Sophie’s rigid world of checklists and calendars melts gently with the warmth of Walt’s habit of surprising her at every turn with compassion and things she never knew to love. Walt finds himself not wanting her to walk into her boyfriend’s arms on Mars, which she does.
What Moonshot gives you is barebones mushy cuteness. The two have undeniable chemistry and you’re rooting for them so quick you don’t even realise it. The soundtrack is fun and poppy in all the right places, and the Walt monologue at the end is so cliched but so cute, even Sophie has to give him props.
Also, a week ago, I didn’t know who Haley Lu Richardson was, and then I watched “Love At First Sight” and now I have the slightest crush on her, and the movie helped.
Jameela Jamil narrates you through this mushy little love story in percentage points and statistics and saves the production company a fortune by playing a lot of background roles, with heavy implication she is either Cupid or God, the latter of which would make for a fun world to live in. Ollie is a statistician at Yale, and Hadley has yet to decide her major at NYU.
They meet at JFK airport, when Hadley, characteristically, misses her flight to London and ends up on the next one for which Ollie, characteristically, is early. The mysterious ways of Jameela Jamil put them in adjacent seats, and Ollie, nerdy as he may be, is irresistibly suave and receives what the kids call “The Eyes” from Hadley multiple times over the Atlantic. If you don’t, at one specific point, yell “KISS” at the screen, consider yourself made of stone and as melancholic as King Lear.
The conflict bit here is heartfelt, or, at least it tries to be. There’s some grasps for the heartstrings with moments of parental grief and connection and it’s all very messy and sad.
Ollie, thankfully, has his moment of recognising that numbers don’t tell his story, feelings do (Yes, that’s the moral; Deal with it). What follows isn’t that surprising but it’s a fun and cozy watch nonetheless.
Watch this space for more romcoms you maybe shouldn’t watch but would make a fun off-day afternoon.
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