Certificate: PG
Running Time: 100 mins
UK Distributor: Prime Video
WHO’S IN ONE TRUE LOVES?
Phillipa Soo, Simu Liu, Luke Bracey, Tom Everett Scott, Michaela Conlin, Lauren Tom, Michael O’Keefe
WHO’S BEHIND THE CAMERA?
Andy Fickman (director, producer), Taylor Jenkins Reid and Alex J. Reid (writers), Adam Beasley, Sarah Finn, Arianne Fraser, Michael Jefferson, Petr Jákl, Willie Kutner, Ryan Donnell Smith and Betsy Sullenger (producers), Nathan Wang (composer), Greg Gardiner (cinematographer), Jeff Freeman (editor)
WHAT’S IT ABOUT?
A woman (Soo) is torn between the man she was about to marry (Bracey) and her new lover (Liu)…
WHAT ARE MY THOUGHTS ON ONE TRUE LOVES?
As of this review, the Writer’s Guild of America are striking for the first time in fifteen years for a number of entirely understandable reasons, one of them being the growing concern of AI software being used to craft screenplays using algorithms and the most basic of formulas to work with. It’s rational for any writer in Hollywood to be concerned with the stilted creativity that AI-produced scripts would most likely churn out, and one needn’t look any further than One True Loves as a potential example of what the field could look like if computers had their way over people with actual creative minds.
In fairness, One True Loves wasn’t, at least to my knowledge, written by AI – instead, human writers Taylor Jenkins Reid and Alex J. Reid are credited with adapting the former’s novel of the same name – but its overwhelmingly bland emptiness and painfully formulaic story and structure would be enough to convince you that a soulless computer was behind it.
The film centres around Emma (Phillipa Soo), a Massachusetts-based young woman who meets and falls for handsome documentary filmmaker Jesse (Luke Bracey), and the two of them venture far away from their town to travel the world and eventually get married. However, Jesse suddenly disappears after a helicopter crash over the ocean and is presumed dead; a distraught Emma moves back home, where she reconnects with her childhood friend Sam (Simu Liu) and starts to finally move on in her life, even agreeing to marry him. Drama strikes, inevitably, when Jesse is suddenly found alive and is eager to reunite with his wife, forcing Emma to choose which of her – <groaning sound effect> – one true loves she wants to spend the rest of her life with, even though it’s glaringly obvious which of the two is by far the better choice (hint: it’s the guy who wasn’t in that awful Point Break remake).
It’s pretty much the stock love triangle plot that has long been a piece of low-hanging fruit for writers to get some easy romantic drama out of: two handsome dudes, one lovesick girl, who shall she pick? It’s certainly a reliable formula, as many romances from Titanic to Twilight have stuck with this plot over the years, but the vast majority of them end exactly how one might think they would – one dude is chosen, and everyone mostly lives happily ever after – so the element of surprise is long gone by this point. Yet, One True Loves is still surprising in how very unsurprising it is, because the script is more or less a bare-bones retelling of this familiar concept, with all the expected conventions but very little imagination beyond that, making it feel as though (once again) it was artificially manufactured by a computer to be the most straightforward love triangle movie possible – and not even a good one at that.
Beyond the formulaic nature of the plot, One True Loves feels ridiculously undercooked, with no defining characterisations beyond the most stock placeholders imaginable – one of the many archetypes her include the supportive best friend/sibling who somehow has all the right things to say that accurately sum up the situation at play – with only the reliable charisma of actors Phillipa Soo, Luke Bracey, and especially Simu Liu giving them any sense of life. Andy Fickman’s direction here is also exceptionally lazy, failing to cover up its blatant limitations in ways that make it look and feel laughably cheap, with one early montage meant to document a couple’s travels to places like Italy and China looking like they were simply shot in someone’s backyard in between all the stock footage of those actual locations.
It looks and feels like something that was destined for repeat showings on the Hallmark Channel, to where you can literally see the fades to adverts in the actual movie, which conveniently only seem to happen whenever two people are passionately kissing and starting to undress (because God forbid a romance movie that has actual romance in it). Thank goodness, though, that the actors are at least trying to give some good performances here, because if they seemed like they were half-assing it as much as the filmmakers, then this would have felt just as terminally rote as Netflix’s Your Place or Mine was.
Even they, though, deserve far better material than this lame and entirely disposable romantic drama that has few stakes, even less production values, and the most unimaginative spin on a familiar concept since Bella Swan couldn’t decide between a brooding vampire and a hunky werewolf. However, at least those films were entertaining, intentional or otherwise; One True Loves is just a manufactured bore.
If this is what AI romance writing could potentially conjure up, then we wholeheartedly support the WGA in their current strike objectives.
SO, TO SUM UP…
One True Loves is a creatively bankrupt romance drama that suffers from heavily conventional writing and exceptionally lazy filmmaking, with only the charismatic lead performances lending any sense of life into a love story that features very little actual love on display.
