Meet Cute – Film Review

Sheila, a young woman grappling with suicidal thoughts, discovers that a tanning bed in a nail salon is a time machine. Traveling back 24 hours, she relives the best date night of her life over and over, only to decide that her boyfriend, Gary, needs some fixing. Unaware that meddling with the past could ruin the future, Sheila goes even further back in time to turn him into the perfect man — even though he was already pretty perfect.

The first act of Alex Lehmann‘s Meet Cute is incredibly deceiving because it nearly convinces you that the rest of the film that will follow is going to be good. Lehmann seemingly has the ability to make a solid first act nailed down, but manages to lose sight of any original ideas as soon as the second act kicks into gear.

Let’s just get this right out of the way – the idea of a romantic-comedy is obviously nothing new. We get countless movies exactly like this one far too often, if anything. But Meet Cute aims to throw a little bit of a twist in here by making it have similar themes to Groundhog Day or Happy Death Day.

How so? Well, it turns out our lead protagonist Sheila uses a time machine to relive this one particular day in order to fix certain aspects of a date she went on that she wished went differently. Sounds like it could be kind of fun, right? Well, yes, but unfortunately, the execution is less than favorable.

This is a movie that doesn’t even run for an hour and a half and yet by the thirty minute mark, it seemed as if screenwriter Noga Pnueli ran out of ideas already. She has had some experience in the past with screenwriting, but this strangely feels like the work of a rookie.

All of the time travel elements also feel disappointingly half-baked here, as well. This could have been a legitimately deep exploration of how one woman will go to any lengths in order to change this date she went on. It could have showed how truly dangerous this is. How being so fixated on one thing can damage your health. But, that’s not the kind of film this ends up being.

That’s not to say the whole thing is bad though. While there are some solid jokes throughout, the real saving grace here is without a doubt Kaley Cuoco in the role of Sheila. She looks as if she’s having the time of life as this character, and even when the script conjures up some bizarre dialogue, Cuoco delivers these lines and sells them.

Pete Davidson is also quite good in the role of Gary, although he is nowhere near the levels of greatness that Cuoco manages to reach. Together, however, they manage to have remarkably strong chemistry in what is one of the year’s most surprisingly effective duos.

All in all though, this film just did not do it for me. Even if you’re a humongous fan of rom-coms or the lead actors for that matter, there’s really no reason to seek this film out. It’s definitely not one of the worst movies of the year, but it certainly isn’t even close to being one of the best, either.

Meet Cute may feature solid performances from Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson, but it’s ultimately an extremely bland and unmoving rom-com.