Rachael Leigh Cook and Damon Wayans Jr really are a charming few in a ridiculous but mostly entertaining comedy that is romantic
Rachael Leigh Cook and Damon Wayans Jr star 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 shortage thereof, does not have any bearing on viewership, but additionally https://datingrating.net/catholicmatch-review, further along the list can be an underlined reminder that nostalgia nevertheless rules. It is not only any nostalgia however a certain type that transports thirtysomething millennials returning to their teenage years, as evidenced because of the present success of Clueless or Jurassic Park or Moesha or Friends, quick access to movies and shows a lot of us needed to struggle for back within the time.
It’s filtered right through to their initial content strategy too, whether it is 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 breakout that is richer-soundtracked a sequence of commercial disappointments (RIP Josie plus the Pussycats). But Cook is just a face who can prove instantly recognisable still up to a generation whom feigned shock whenever she shot to popularity her cups for Freddie Prinze Jr and had been like, actually demonstrably nevertheless appealing, and now have wondered where she’s been from the time.
She stars as moralistic but hard-up attorney Susan who assumes on instances she thinks in but struggles to help make ends satisfy, driving a (stylishly) scrappy old vehicle having a Tiffany record stuck in the cassette player. But one morning her luck shifts whenever handsome complete complete stranger Nick (Damon Wayans Jr) asks her to accept a unique 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 is certainly 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 would you a somewhat better task at making their Netflix paycheque project feel just like maybe it’s seen from the silver screen. It’s a slick and confection that is glossy contains a few handsome shots that elevates it simply over the really low club Netflix has set for it self (an outside pan back again to comparison Cook’s character alone with wine across the street to her sister’s happy family members is unusually impressive). It’s additionally passably entertaining, a silly and forgettable but mostly charming diversion that should see other ’90s has-beens clamouring because of their very very very very own celebrity cars.
There’s an attempt that is half-hearted to skewer or at last gently poke at dating app culture plus it’s a ripe area uneasily full of businesses luring singletons in aided by the vow of love yet fundamentally perhaps maybe maybe perhaps maybe maybe maybe not wanting them to complement up and just simply simply just take their company away. But like a great many other movies or demonstrates that delve into comparable territory, Galanoy and Hackett depend on the weary label of digital courtship dominated by one-note one-joke whackjobs, basing the concept 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 example Issa Rae and Aziz Ansari, also have fallen foul for this and thus it might be naive to anticipate far better here nonetheless it stays a tiring, simplistic distillation of an even more world that is complex in appreciate Guaranteed, the bad dates get boring real fast.
Cook is a casino game lead though, enthusiastically tossing by by by by by herself in to the formula she faces, and there’s a natural chemistry with Wayans Jr, a charismatic star whom should really be cropping up in far larger jobs than this. It is weirdly the 2nd Netflix summer time comedy to haul down Heather Graham whilst the outsized cameo that is comic weird because she’s perhaps maybe maybe not an star who’s particularly adept at comedy and somehow her presence here’s much more embarrassing than it had been in Desperados, quite the feat.
There won’t be many people who’ll keep in mind it by this time around the following month but within its quick running time, it simply about fits the brief, zipping along at rate buoyed because of the charm of their leads, like nearly guaranteed in full alternatively.
Enjoy Guaranteed is available now on Netflix
