“Love Again” Review
Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan star as a romantic couple brought together by strange circumstances in “Love Again.”
There’s a scene at the end of “Taxi Driver” where Robert De Niro’s Travis Bickle is sitting on a couch in a bloodied heap after rescuing a child prostitute and being shot multiple times in the process. After surviving this whole ordeal, his mental scars go unnoticed by society and he’s hailed as a hero by the press. Not only was seeing “Love Again” the cinematic equivalent of lying on that couch, but I too deserve the hero title for having sat through the whole thing.
Two years after the death of her fiancé John (Arinzé Kene), Mira (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) tries to put herself back out there but has difficulty letting go of her lost love. So, she starts texting intimate and personal messages to John’s phone number. Upon receiving a new cell phone for his job as a journalist, Rob (Sam Heughan) begins receiving Mira’s texts and begins to slowly fall in love with her. After eventually meeting her, Rob and Mira begin to strike up a relationship that is threatened by the false pretenses it was based on. Oh and Celine Dion is in the story, probably to make a soundtrack that will be more popular than the film it’s made for.
Just based on this synopsis, can’t you just tell everything that’s going to happen? The answer is yes, because you’ve seen at least three movies. You know that the big secret of how Rob first met Mira is going to be revealed, she’s going to find out at the wrong time, the relationship will end, everyone will mope for fifteen minutes and then the couple will get back together. It’s been done to death in an endless string of mediocre romantic comedies and I hate this God damned cliche so much.
In fact, I want to go back in time through the annals of history, find the first person to come up with this “liar-revealed” cliche and mercilessly butcher him. Butcher him in a way so horrific that I will undoubtedly get three Netlifx true-crime series based on me and they all end with the same terrifying intertitle: the killer has never been caught.
The sad thing is that this basic set-up sounds interesting if writer/director James C. Strouse (who’s made several good films in the past) had taken a more unique approach to the script. Everything feels like a first draft that desperately needed another rewrite and I quickly became more and more tired of “Love Again” as it dragged on for an hour and forty minutes. That may not seem that long, but “Love Again” made it feel like eternity.
“Love Again’s” silver lining is the chemistry with Chopra Jonas and Heughan. While the story is the worst kind of tripe, their scenes together do soften the relentless blows that the film gives. As for Celine Dion, I kept thinking why someone so immensely talented would contribute five new songs to the film’s soundtrack and star in the film. If you really want to appreciate Dion’s brilliance as an artist, just skip the film and buy the album.
What angers me so much about “Love Again” is how this story has clearly been done to death yet this film acts like it’s using these tropes for the first time. There’s atrocious monologues about love that made me contemplate purchasing a book of matches and a tank of gasoline so I could pay homage to the album cover of Rage Against The Machine’s first record. “Love Again” tries to force you to feel heartfelt emotions instead of having them manifest naturally.
The entirety of “Love Again” feels like a big-budget Hallmark film, a genre I’ve always viewed as cinematic junk food that I don’t like the taste of. Seeing this film was like being in a sugar coma, unable to leave the theater as you’re paralyzed by mediocrity. If this is your idea of a date movie, your significant other deserves much, much better.
