Romance par accident

Seen first 25 minutes of this film. It is too childy, like for people in a kindergarden. Background music just support that feeling. There are some "sad" things mentioned and this is not suitable for this kind of film.

Fair acting, Decent chemistry with Getenesh Berhe and Henderson Wade despite diluting that part of the story with too much other junk.

The setup for the fake relationship was a bit different, but after that the story was full of clichés. The only tension was in the story about Matt's father and that was totally repetition of many very similar story lines right down to the explanation for dad's long absence and silence. Hence me calling it other junk.

Some of the transitions seemed clumsy

A couple of reviewers commented that this fills a hole as far as lack of diversity actors in romance movies. I find that interesting because Lifetime and Hallmark have had a decent amount of diversity actors for several years, but that has really exploded in the last year or so. Admittedly, much of that expansion has been since Spring of 2021, but it's been building for far longer than that.

Its a Hallmark-style movie so its not going to win any major prizes, but this is an above average example of the genre. The writing is decent. The acting is above average. Not sure why these movies always have main characters that are all black or all white and intermingling is rare, which seems unrealistic. Also not sure I believe that a young black woman getting a PhD in English would want to write a thesis on Jane Austin but I guess its possible. A bit of a tear jerker just to warn folks.

We don't see a lot of diversity in the lead characters of romance films so this one needs to be acknowledged and supported. We want more diverse stories that follow the same feel good formula.

People are less forgiving when the feel good romances feature black people, but sometimes we want to see a simple, cheesy, slice of life movie with Black people. Not a complicated movie, totally predictable, but that's what cheesy romantic comedies are about. I give it a 9 not because its a great movie, but great for the "Cheesy Romantic Movie Featuring Black People" Sub -Genre....