Movie Review: The Other Zoey

 

Michael's Movie Grade: F

A painful romcom. 

When this film begins the main character states that she does not believe that romantic love truly exists and not long after that she hates romantic comedies because they are completely unrealistic. If after this you can't guess how the film is going to end, you have never seen a movie before. Naturally because she hates romantic comedies, you know that this movie is going to follow every romantic comedy cliché in the book. Not only this but the film feels like it is trying to be clever by following the clichés while the main character denounces them. However, this is not clever in the slightest, it is simply just overly predictable. Honestly this makes these clichés seem even more painful by calling attention to them. Yet these painful moments might be the highlight of this film's humor. Every single joke here falls flat and I didn't even once smile while watching this. In fact, many of the comedic moments are so obvious and forced that they are just as painful as the typical romcom tropes. This is especially seen in the much of the awkward dialogue from the main character, which simply is trying too hard to be funny, it comes off as obnoxious. Speaking of our main character, I don't know how we are supposed to like this person. Not only is what she is doing completely wrong, but this film shows us time and time again that she is completely self-centered. Because of this we don't want to see her get together with the guy at the end of the movie. He may not be the most interesting character, but he deserves better than our main character. Plus, it is hard to feel any real romantic chemistry between characters, when one of them is completely selfishly using the other in such a mean way. If this was played only for broad comedy, such a relationship could work, but when we are actually supposed to care about the characters, it just feels unpleasant.

So, at the end of the day, what we have is a romantic comedy that is neither funny nor romantic. This simply means that it fails on every level.