“When in doubt, watch a rom-com” is what I always say, and this time was no different. I love a good Friday night release, so imagine my absolute joy when I saw Netflix was gifting me with my assuredly cheesy fix for the week with Vanessa Caswill’s “Love at First Sight” — released on Friday, Sept. 15.
Starring Haley Lu Richardson — of “The White Lotus” fame — and Ben Hardy — most notably known from 2018’s Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” — the film chronicles Hadley and Oliver’s airport meet cute and their inevitable separation at customs.
While this does sound like the classic setup to every rom-com you have ever seen, there was something different about “Love at First Sight” when I impulsively searched it up on Google pre-viewing: a 75% on Rotten Tomatoes.
I do not lend much credence to Rotten Tomatoes and instead subscribe to the Martin Scorsese philosophy that the review-aggregation website “[has] everything to do with the movie business and absolutely nothing to do with either the creation or the intelligent viewing of film.
“These firms and aggregators have set a tone that is hostile to serious filmmakers…it seems like there are more and more voices out there engaged in pure judgmentalism, people who seem to take pleasure in seeing films and filmmakers rejected, dismissed and in some cases ripped to shreds,” Scorsese wrote in an op-ed for The Hollywood Reporter.
While it may seem a little too serious to be quoting Scorsese when talking about a silly little Netflix rom-com, that is where my mind went, so I don’t know what to tell you.
My beloved romcoms have been ripped to shreds for far too long following their heyday in the late 1990s and early 2000s, and quite frankly, that passing C grade is Oscar-worthy in the modern rom-com genre. I haven’t heard numbers like that since 2018’s “Set It Up” — holding a groundbreaking 92 percent.
But back to “Love at First Sight.” You know the drill, a missed flight, a dead charger and a broken seatbelt bring our main characters closer and closer together during their flight.
Hadley is flying to London for her father’s wedding and assumes that Oliver is doing the same due to the garment bag he is carrying — more on this later.
The pair fall in love on this flight because what else would happen, but the first significant wrench in their potential forever future comes when Hadley’s phone dies after Oliver gives her his number — a modern tragedy.
Hadley begrudgingly makes her way to her father’s wedding and overhears guests talking about attending a memorial service for Oliver’s mother at the same location he mentioned he was going to for a “wedding” — what are the chances?
Hadley takes this as a cue that she should hop on a bus and make her way to this funeral, but when she gets there, she is shocked to see that Oliver’s mother is still alive and is instead hosting her Shakespeare-themed living memorial.
Hadley and Oliver are reunited, but it can’t be that easy. They fight and get separated again and then serendipitously reunite after realizing their instant love for each other — you get the theme.
While these tropes and plot devices may sound played out, Jameela Jamil’s omnipresent godlike narrator character was intriguing enough to truly set the tone and make me feel in on the joke.
I loved living vicariously through Richardson and expanding on my airport love delusions in a very “Before Sunrise” way, and I honestly think you will too — admit it.
Rating: 4/5 stars
