L'autre Zoey

This is just another film that brings absolutely nothing new in terms of ideas. It features the usual cliché of a naive young girl who lies for far too long, embarasses herself, loses her friend for a short period of time and runs back to mommy. Eventually, she decides is time put on her big girl pants and face the world, which she does. And, lo and behold, like winning the lottery with a scratched-up ticket, she stumbles into the happy ending she most definitely doesn't deserve!

On a positive note, I do like seeing new/fresh/young actors with potential on screen, so at least it has that going for it.

Zoey Miller (Josephine Langford) doesn't believe in romantic love and is working on her version of a dating app. She has a meet-cute with Zach MacLaren (Drew Starkey) and the rom-com tropes continue. He gets hit by a car and in a semi-conscious state, he assumes Zoey to be his girlfriend. In reality, he has a new girlfriend in aggressive soccer player Zoey. Zoey Miller is about to tell his parents when his cousin Miles Maclaren (Archie Renaux) shows up.

The first part reminds me a little of While You Were Sleeping. It's got a lot of different rom-coms being mixed together. I'm willing to go with this unusual premise until the family dinner. I don't understand her initial plan. It makes no sense. She wants to sweep Miles off his feet so that he would steal his brain-injured cousin's sweet girlfriend. That's a stupid plan. Even if it works, you've got a guy willing to steal a girlfriend from his brain-injured cousin. There is an easy writing fix. Tell everybody except Zach right from the start. Nobody wants to cause him more trauma so everybody keeps it a secret from him. That would make sense. This does not.

A weak script and a bum's rush ending, it deserved to have an ending that went beyond Jam Fest. I liked the leads Langford and Starkey, but there was too much time spent on roommate Elle and her love interest Diego and too little time on Zoey's love interest Zach. Amnesia is a formulaic plot and love apps are so overused in rom-coms.

Andie MacDowell is a acting veteran, good in anything she's in. The rest of the cast was ok. Due to the strike we haven't heard from the leads or the writer and the director. Why didn't they interview cast and crew right after the shooting, so they had something for previews and to generate interest in the movie? If Netflix was looking for filler content, this was filler.

I am a total romantic comedy sucker, whilst at the same time, completely hating the relentless steretypes and tropes, and being sickened by the internalised misogynistic/ paternalistic biases usually on display. I am always on the lookout for a truly NEW romantic comedy. This movie isn't quite that, but I think it's trying to take a step in that direction.

The romantic set-up uses a ridiculous range of tropes; my MOST hated here being; a smart person making a series of stupid decisions. And kudos to the 'amnesia' trope. The choice of amnesia in particular was a clue that the writer was deliberately using obvious tropes in an attempt to subvert them. It does a good job of showing rather than explaining this, so at least it assumes the audience is smart.

Whilst it's generally inoffensive, it is never quite moving, either as comedy or drama. Still. It is trying to say something...maybe the very simple "Don't close yourself off from love". And the cast is diverse, very natural in their characterisations, and of course, very beautiful.

Though it's nothing challenging, it is enjoyable, and I think, can claim to be uncommon in its lack of implicit misogyny. Feel reassured it is watchable. Purely for entertainment.

This movie is likely the future of film if we move to scripts being generated by AI. It feels like they threw every rom-com and college movie trope into a generator and this came out the other end.

Full of implausibilities and plot holes, the story plods along and it's hard to get invested in it because every action is ridiculous. You almost start a game of guessing which stereotypical story they will dive into next.

The concerning thing is if the main roles were reversed, Zoey lost her memory and Zach lied about who he was, it would actually be a dark story about predatory behaviour. But because the girl lies, it's a bouncy rom-com.

That being said, for all the things that make it a paint-by-numbers film, it is extremely watchable. It has a Hallmark-movie-for-Taylor-Swift-fans vibe to it and it is visually enjoyable. The cast is truly great, the material they have to delivery isn't meaty, but they do so in a realistic way and each person brings their character to life well.

I'm very confused how Andie McDowell and Heather Graham got caught up in all of this.

So, stick the movie on on a Sunday afternoon - it's fun, it's well produced, but don't expect a storyline or script that will blow you away. You guess the entire arc of the film in the first 10 minutes. But it is watchable and even, for some, enjoyable.