Love At First Sight : A Review

First thought after watching the trailer of the movie? It should’ve been named ‘Love At First Flight’ like, how do you miss that? But whatever.

Love at first sight is a Netflix rom-com starring Haley Lu Richardson (Hadley) and Ben Hardy (Oliver) with Jameela Al Jamil as the narrator (and as a bunch of side characters). Now, the keyword in that sentence was Netflix because the streaming platform has a…questionable creative head when it comes to original movies so my expected were lowered to say the least. 

For every good Netflix original like ‘Set It Up’ and ‘Do Revenge’ we get its karmic balance through movies like ‘The Princess Switch’ trilogy. And if I’m being honest, the movie was decent. Nothing revolutionary, just cozy and cute.

The main characters do have their meet-cute in an airport which definitely made me suspend my belief because though its adorable to imagine, in reality strangers are still strangers. Chemistry though? They have it. Which is appreciated. You what is also appreciated? A semi-decent script. It’s sad to say but most of the movies (both Netflix and otherwise) these days have very awkward and clunky writing. So, yes half-decent writing is nice to see. And speaking of awkward, Haley’s character Hadley (both H?) is giving us the classic early 2000’s main girl, who is bad at speaking while simultaneously having verbal diarrhea, or what is now more popularly termed as ‘trauma dumping’. And she kills it so no complaints here.

Again, my suspension of disbelief is turning into a blanket because these two strangers with chemistry share intimate details that you would never do (hopefully you wouldn’t) in real life, even if it’s an attractive stranger. I am kind of tired of watching characters whose parents divorce or they have some childhood trauma and that becomes their personality or they just hate the parent for ‘ruining their life’. Like, can’t they have a happy childhood? Is a sad backstory necessary to properly value the love they eventually receive? We later find out that the male lead’s mother is terminally ill with cancer for the second time so, I guess the answer to that is no.

I do like that the movie splits to show character perspectives once they land starting with Hadley and then moving to Oliver (Ben Hardy’s character). Again, not a fan of whiny characters so watching Hadley looking depressed at her dad’s wedding was not fun. However, the plot twist with Oliver lying about also attending a wedding when it was actually a funeral, was. I love when characters lie for a good reason. Even if this one is actually quite sad. The idea of having a funeral when the person is still alive and dressing up as roles from Shakespeare is cute and will get its flowers for creativity. The eulogy scenes and the whole funeral was an actual joy to watch.

One of the central problem with these kind of movies where the characters are essentially strangers (and still are in this case) is that it makes the allusion of having a strong bond between them non-existent. Because we saw how they met and every interaction they had. And while it was cute, no doubt, it isn’t really much to chase someone down the city for. The suspension of disbelief strikes a third, unfortunate time. Hence, when they had their third act conflict (the bane of my existence), clunky albeit, I couldn’t argue about the reasoning for their conflict. They argue about his mother and Oliver’s feelings regarding her death, making Oliver bring up the very real point that they don’t know each other and it not being her place to tell him how to feel about it and Hadley not knowing what to do, leaves.

But, you know, in the end the messes clean themselves up. Hadley makes up with her dad, Oliver gets the ‘go get her talk’ from the family and runs to her. They make up and share a sweet kiss. And it’s cute and as always, I eat it up like the rom-com starved peasant I am.

Now, bringing up the elephant that isn’t really an elephant but more just something I forgot to address after mentioning once: Jameela Al Jamil. I didn’t mind her really as a narrator but it was distracting and after a while started feeling a celebrity cameo that went for way too long. She’s kind of nice(?) in the movie but I have no idea why she got so much screen time. Or, if having her as a narrator was necessary in the first place. The movie would’ve been fine without one but it was tolerable so it was fine I guess.

Overall, a nice addition to Netflix's original rom-coms, Love At First Sight had its failings but did fairly well for itself. And for those reasons, the movie gets a 3/5 stars from me.

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