The Broken Hearts Gallery

The Broken Hearts Gallery is the cinematic equivalent of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich; it doesn't have a lot of substance and it's nothing you haven't tasted before, but it's good, it's comforting, and it's sweet.

The two lead actors have a lot of fun chemistry and they bounce off each other very nicely. The plot is full of overused tropes and conveniences but everything is executed in such a way that it's still a great deal of fun to watch.

This film takes familiar ingredients and mixes them together to create something that's just above-average and is never dull. The line delivery and jokes are sharp and witty and this is an entertaining, if slightly forgettable, film that I'd say is worth a watch if you're into the rom-com genre.

The reviews are very mixed, so I guess it's a hit or miss and you can just get that from the trailer. To me, the movie wasn't bad but it's also not something I'd watch again. I liked the concept, it was unique and the little things they held back to reveal later were good too but the chemistry was just off. At some points, the connection felt forced. The supporting characters did a better job than the lead here. The movie has a lot of representation and is very New York-esque, and they just naturally fit it (the best part).

The character Lucy (Geraldine Viswanathan) is not relatable or even something you can pass off as lovable, she's ditzy in the annoying kind of way and Nick (Dacre Montgomery) looks like he had a gun to his temple to shoot this. With different characters playing the lead, the movie would have turned out so much better. It's not an OMG kind of funny, it's an eye-roll kind of funny.

Perhaps I've seen too many rom-coms for too many years, but my threshold for sustained engagement has become higher and harder to cross. That's why my praise for this one may mean more than from younger, more impressionable viewers.

As always, the right casting is essential for a grabber. Some couples just don't click on-screen; others are picked for box office draw, making them too attractive to be credible or relatable in their situations du jour. This offering from writer/director Natalie Krinsky is enhanced by a lower budget and the casting of young men and women who are appealing, without being too high on the eye-candy scale to detract from the desired reflection of reality. The central character played by Geraldine Viswanathan has a perfect blend of looks, intelligence, insecurities and vulnerability to sell her relationships with men, gal pals and career fluctuations. We like her; we really like her.

Next comes the daunting task of a screenplay. The premise of a depressed "dumpee" setting up a gallery displaying memorabilia from lamented lost loves is fresh and clever. In this genre, we almost always know who will, or at least should, wind up together loooong before the couple(s) figure things out, eliminating suspense from the equation. Here's where many lose my empathy. By the time most couples go through more mistakes and misunderstandings than seem reasonable (I hope Judd Apatow, the best comedy writer with the worst sense of running time, sees this), I no longer care whether they reach that "aha" moment. Actually, I often hope they don't, rather than have them breed another generation of similarly clueless progeny. Krinsky juggles enough players and subplots to make the inevitable honey glaze of helpful people and perceptions seem relatively suitable. And it turns out to be heartwarming without cloying. That's another delicate balance many can't pull off. Overall, it surpassed my moderate expectations by a wide margin.

A delightful marshmallow of a movie, with Viwanathan giving her all in a star making turn; she, and a the script which is consistently light and clever but manages to not fall into being stupid ... While also still having some predictable beats and yet balancing it all with some joy and aplomb and making me for the first time in many months wish more than anything I could do karaoke with friends again, is what makes this work. She has such a warm and expressive face (those eyebrows are as crucial to her star power as like Rita Hayworth's hair), but she's a good actress too.

So the key components of this fly enough as a rom com that I can mostly (if not completely) look over two things: much of the soundtrack, with a few exceptions (ie that Billie Eilish song) are unimpressive commercial nonsense, and the performance by Dacre Montgomery didn't click for me. He might be fine in other movies, and he doesn't give an outright bad performance, but he is largely one note for like 75% of this as the "Im too cool for you" dude with it all, and more importantly I didn't buy much in the way of chemistry here with Viswanathan - if anything he comes off like a more steely-eyed and sometimes uncomfortable discount Zac Efron, though I can get why the ladies will find him attractive enough and the director casting him - and that is crippling to this, especially at the end when things have to come to a romantic head (that's not a spoiler, that's just convention).

I dont know how many will go see this in theaters, where it is right now, but come video this will be a swell and often pretty funny addition to any sensible couple's genre rotation (I had one big laugh and I won't say exactly what but it involved an ex president and that's all I will say, and how can you not smile when right after a breakup the bff-roommates swadle the main character and put a dvd of Eternal Sunshine in her arms). I hope we get more from this filmmaker.

This could easily be the type of rom-com that 15 years from now people look back at and try to understand why it didn't get the credit it deserved. The pandemic certainly didn't help but if this film would have dropped on Netflix instead, I imagine it having the sort of pop up publicity that Set it Up did a few years back over the course of a few weeks. It's unique and heartwarming, that's all I look for in romance films these days.

7.4/10.