It’s something weird about me, I don’t believe in love unless it’s in the movies. Love is a transaction for the movies or books. That’s what I will tell you. Yet – give me a romance, a romantic comedy, anything with romance and I will tell you just how much love exists and that people deserve to be together.
Love, Guaranteed is a new romantic comedy on Netflix which stars Rachael Leigh Cook, Damon Wayans Jr., and Heather Graham. It’s got the basic love tropes – girl meets boy, boy and girl fall in love, obstacle in the way, and they give up something big in order to find their way to each other. Queue happy ending and scenic city shot.
But as predictable and corny as that shit is – I live for it. Give me all the tropes and all the predictability. Give me all the love that I don’t believe in. I feel like Love, Guaranteed is everything that we all love about love and all of the things that we sigh about in the movies. It’s the shit that has been played out in every Hallmark and Lifetime movie.
But it’s the shit that we can’t get enough of.
Love, Guaranteed has a simple, yet complex storyline, “Sparks fly when a crusading but cash-strapped attorney takes on a charming client looking to sue a dating site that guarantees its users will find love.”
We first of all meet Susan, an awkward do gooder lawyer who wants to make a change in the world. She’s got a firm that is going under. They’ve had to give up the water cooler, because “pro bono” means “tap water” apparently.
She’s met Nick. Nick is a charismatic as fuck hot man who she thinks is accosting her on the street. She’s not the nicest as he walks besides her and tries to ask her a million questions. Only when they turn to go in the same place does she realize that he’s a potential client.
Nick wants to retain her services to sue a dating app. See, the app is called Love, Guaranteed and so it guarantees love. However, they say that you have to go on 1000 dates. Legit 1000 dates.
Look, 1000 dates is a lot of fucking dates. Like how does anyone have that much time? The app is smart, cause they think that no one will go on that many dates. But Nick – well, he’s gone on 986 when he walks in the door. Dude has too much time on his hands, I guess. That or he needs to teach a master class in time management.
Long story short, Susan thinks that he’s a player who is looking for a pay day. She judges him and he judges her a bit. She wasn’t about to take his case, but hey, bills need to be paid.
Here’s the thing about life, what we don’t know challenges us and makes us learn. Facing our judgements and learning about people makes us learn. You knew that Nick wasn’t a bad guy, just based off the way that he acted and his mannerisms. He wasn’t looking for a payday, he wanted to be in love. But it would take her seeing him in his environment to see that he’s a man that just wants to give love and receive it.
Susan is a woman that is so guided by work that she doesn’t see anything beyond life in the office. She’s going through life reliving the same day over and being okay with it. She’s stuck in a routine. She doesn’t know how to allow people in.
But the truth is that we all find things in life when we aren’t looking for it. Susan and Nick were brought together and over the course of the film you see them falling.
And it’s fun.
Rachel Leigh Cook is always a delight. she’s always strong in the characters she plays, but with a sense of vulnerability. Damon Wayans Jr. is a delight, the hot man that you want to look at you longingly and fall for you. These two together don’t have a ton of chemistry, but they are adorable as fuck. They seem more like awkward best friends versus people who fall in love.
I know that they bill Heather Graham in the movie, but her character was so annoyingly insignificant that I really just didn’t care.
If the characters had known each other I would have guessed that it would have been more of the My Best Friends Wedding type story line versus this.
You can guess what happens in every moment, but that’s okay. It doesn’t take away from the fun of the movie. It doesn’t take away from you standing up at the end and clapping as these two find their way.
Sure, I don’t believe in love, but when it comes down to it, feel good movies like Love, Guaranteed make me wish I did. It’s a good movie fo you to curl up with and stream. You’ll enjoy it if you love a good RomCom, I guarantee it.
Love, Guaranteed is streaming now.
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