Love, Guaranteed
As is often the case with Netflix originals of late, I came into it with eyes open but a modicum of hope. I like both leads. Damon Waynes was excellent on the criminally underappreciated Happy Endings. Rachel Leigh Cook is, of course, known for her star turn in She’s All That, among other great projects. The premise is reasonably solid, as far as far-fetched rom-com plots go. A man, frustrated with his lack of dating success sues an online dating company that guarantees a match. His lawyer is overworked to the point of having no social life. They are both pretty decent people, despite the baggage of the premise, and so soon sparks fly.
There is a much better movie hiding in that premise than the one we got. One that is full of witty observations about the realities of modern dating, one that contains scintillating and flirtatious dialogue between the two leads, like a modern day Tracy and Hepburn vehicle. We did not get that movie. Instead, we got something that is as hopelessly cliche and upsettingly formulaic as I had feared, with a dull script and half-hearted performances to boot.
The script’s failings begin with the characters, which are awful. Damon Waynes is far too somber and low energy, which not only drags the story down but plays against Waynes’ strengths. Rachel Leigh Cook is a romcom protagonist chimera: a do-gooder lawyer that is going broke because of too much pro-bono work, a career woman workaholic that has let her personal life wither on the vine, all while still somehow acting like an empty vessel character for every female viewer to see themselves in but with almost no personality of her own, quirky car notwithstanding.
The supporting characters aren’t much better. The catty coworker who is overly invested in the protagonist’s life outside work, the camp gay stereotype that exists only to be fabulous, the put together sister with a healthy family life that offers sage advice while representing the road not travelled. All, or almost all, of these things can be done and done well. It is when they all exist at the same time, in a script without either a devilish wit or a healthy heaping of self-awareness, that the whole thing feels like something an A.I. would be programed to write by studying romcoms, rather than a piece of art made by humans to be enjoyed by other humans. This borders on being a totally straight-faced and serious They Came Together, which is bonkers.
The legal aspects of the movie are also complete nonsense. The entire logic of the third act really strained against my understanding of how the American legal system functions. You don’t need to be a legal expert to notice, either, as much of what seems obviously wrong or ineffective about what the parties are doing feels that way because of other movies and television I’ve watched about court proceedings. As pitched, the case for false advertising makes a certain amount of sense, but as concepts of what is and is not legally binding enter the picture, among many other issues, the whole thing seems to get more and more silly, even to a legal layman like myself.
Speaking of which, the big courtroom climax is groan-inducing. Romantic comedies are often cliche in their very nature and so it is often about the execution more than it is about the creativity of the trick. That being said, Love, Guaranteed goes for just about the most cliche ending and also does it in the most uninteresting and hacky way possible. This grand, last minute confession that bizarrely invalidates maybe half of the movie’s raison d’etre up until that point, in service of a fairly empty and unearned “love conquers all” message, didn’t make me feel warm, fuzzy feelings. It made me wonder why every ounce of creativity seems to have been bled out of feature length romantic comedies.
Would Recommend: If you are absolutely desperate for anything even resembling a late 1990s to early 2000s romantic comedy.
Would Not Recommend: If anything bordering on made-for-TV quality is beneath your standards.