One True Loves, 2023.
Directed by Andy Fickman.
Starring Phillipa Soo, Simu Liu, Luke Bracey, Michaela Conlin, Oceana Matsumoto, Gary Hudson, Oona Yaffe, Beth Broderick, Lauren Tom, Phinehas Yoon, Cooper van Grootel, Michael O’Keefe, and Tom Everett Scott.
SYNOPSIS:
A woman is unexpectedly forced to choose between the husband she has long thought dead and the fiance who has finally brought her back to life.
The overbearingly mawkish One True Loves features three unbelievably whiny and insufferable leads caught up in the love triangle brought on by circumstances so preposterous director Andy Fickman (working alongside screenwriters Taylor Jenkins Reid and Alex J. Reid, based on the book by the former) seems embarrassed to address it in greater detail. For roughly 95 minutes, the filmmakers serve up an astonishingly cloying, frustrating mess that rarely has a moment of real human emotion.
Sam (Simu Liu) is set to marry his longtime childhood friend and the woman of his dreams, Emma (Phillipa Soo), after crushing on her throughout the majority of his life, yet was always too nervous about expressing his feelings. However, this occasion is bittersweet as Emma is still in the process of moving forward after her husband Jesse (Luke Bracey) was deemed dead after his presumably private plane went down somewhere around the deserted island and was missing for four years.
After being treated to a corny montage depicting Emma and Jesse embracing and encouraging each other’s adventurous lifestyles and the years leading up to the accident (he was going somewhere to shoot footage for a documentary), Jesse waltzes right back in among the living and back into the relationship. Despite horrifically acted scenes of Emma grieving and being assured that Jesse is dead, he is back with practically no explanation of how he survived what being stranded was like. He does get a brief nightmare PTSD sequence that looks like it was made in 20 minutes using images from the Internet, and that’s about it.
Rather than deal with any of this in an emotionally grounded and human manner, One True Loves quickly transforms into a narrative about Emma forced into the difficult scenario of choosing which man is best for her and who she wants to live the rest of her life with. Sam begins to feel threatened by the return of Jesse, as she has always been more interested in him, making him her first choice. This means that there are scenes of Sam ranting about his love life to his high school orchestra students, smashing his phone like a child because the text message bubbles are appearing on his phone, but Emma is not actually responding.
Everyone around these people somehow knows Sam is engaged to Emma, aside from Jesse. One also presumes that would be the first thing she would tell him. Nevertheless, they start reconnecting until he inevitably does learn about what’s happening, where he gets his own time to shine as a crybaby bitch failing to comprehend why Emma moved on instead of waiting four fucking years for him, a man everyone thought was dead (and that would be dead if this movie made any logical sense) to wait around for him to find his way back to her. There is also something offputting about Emma playing the field and making love to both guys, hiding information from Jesse. Nothing is believable regarding how her character processes anything about this tricky dynamic, and the atrocious scriptwriters are at fault.
Admittedly, One True Loves does have aspirations in showing how people change over time and how people should attempt moving on from tragedy, but that is completely smothered by every scene functioning as phony melodramatic garbage replete with cheesy love songs every 30 seconds over lazy montages. It’s a love story that will only inspire hatred for its characters.
Flickering Myth Rating – Film: ★ / Movie: ★
Robert Kojder is a member of the Chicago Film Critics Association and the Critics Choice Association. He is also the Flickering Myth Reviews Editor. Check here for new reviews, follow my Twitter or Letterboxd, or email me at MetalGearSolid719@gmail.com
