Sometimes Hollywood waits until a movie has finished filming to tell us who’s in it. Which is funny, because we would have happily started obsessing over the casting earlier. But fine. Keep your secrets. Apparently, the strategy works, because here we are.
And The One Before the One? They got us with the title.
It sounds messy. It sounds romantic. It sounds like someone is about to discover that the person they’ve spent years calling “the one who got away” might have stayed in the past for a reason.
Obviously, we’re interested. A second chance at first love? That sounds dangerous. Also terrifying.
The film follows Steven (Jack Champion), a burned-out Wall Street analyst who returns home for his twentieth high school reunion and somehow finds himself transported back to senior year.
First of all, a twentieth high school reunion sounds frightening enough without being forced to relive the actual experience. We survived it once. Let’s not get ambitious. We’d personally not like a do over – EVER.
But Steven sees an opportunity to rewrite history, particularly when it comes to his lost love, Beth (Grace Van Dien). The complication? The girl he’s spent twenty years remembering as his soulmate might not be the person he’s convinced himself she was.
And that’s the part that has our attention.
Because there’s remembering someone fondly, and then there’s spending two decades editing a relationship into a love story that nobody could possibly live up to. Steven gets the chance to revisit the real person behind the memory, which sounds considerably more complicated than simply winning her back.
We do love a romance that makes someone question their own history. Give us the drama.
THE CAST MADE US DOUBLE TAKE
Jack Champion (Avatar) stars as Steven, with Grace Van Dien (Stranger Things) as Beth. Owen Patrick Joyner (Final Destination: Bloodlines) plays Steven’s best friend Brian, while Georgie Murphy (Stumble) plays Katie, his longtime friend and a songwriter.
Steven’s return to the past also gives him a chance to help Brian avoid missing an opportunity to play college football and to rebuild his relationship with Katie.
Now, we’re not saying the longtime friend is about to become our emotional investment in this movie. We’re just saying we’ve read the setup, noticed the title, and have some suspicions.
The prospect of Steven reconsidering more than his romantic history makes this premise appealing. Also makes us think about the one that got away and wonder if that was a blessing. But Steven – he’s arriving with twenty years of hindsight, but hindsight doesn’t necessarily mean he understands what everyone else needed back then.
Directed by Brittany Sarkisian from a story by John E. Clark, the film wrapped last month in Austin, Texas. Charlie Gillespie, Sara Waisglass, and Siena Agudong were originally attached before scheduling conflicts led to casting changes. We all know what that means.
