MOVIE REVIEW: Love at First Sight (2023)
I had some time to myself the other day, so I decided to go through my Netflix list to see if there was anything cheesy and short that I could down in under 2 hours one evening, and landed on a quaint-looking rom-com called Love at First Sight. Since I haven’t done rom-coms in years now because most of them are so toxic and awful and sexist (you know, implying that awful men will always get the girl), I was admittedly curious to see what the 2020s had on offer when it comes to romance movies.
Up-front, I will say briefly that the above trailer is a load of garbage compared to the movie. It makes the story out to be way more rom-com dramatic than it actually is, in a bad way. So just keep that in mind.
Another thing that I should start off by saying is that I truly hate most rom-coms. Don’t get me wrong, there are a few that I do really like (Elizabethtown and The Wedding Singer to name a couple), because I am a sucker for a nice love story, but I just dislike them historically, as so few of them actually portray realistic and/or healthy relationships. I throw a fit every time the girl pines over a moody asshole and cringe my soul out at truly oppressive and toxic portrayals of relationships like in Twilight and its disturbing accolades. I also simply don’t agree with the western belief that the initial spark is as important as we are led to believe it is (I have been the girl who has been obsessed with the feelings from the meet-cute for a long time, and I have also seen a horrible percentage of my girlfriends get trapped by it as well). So know that I came into this movie with all of the skepticism towards western romance and still came out feeling surprisingly positive about it.
The movie makes a big point up-front about how the two main characters, Hadley Sullivan and Oliver Jones, will fall in love on a flight and of course, being a movie, it does have to have some will-they-won’t-they drama as to whether they end up together afterwards. It’s more of a journey of the how, after their initial meet-cute and Hadley ultimately losing Oliver’s number due to her perpetually dying cell phone. However, the trailer makes it seem like there are a lot of big gestures and drama, but in reality, it’s not so much like that, but I’ll cover the plot down below. However, without spoiling anything, I will say that the character’s meet-cute is indeed pretty cute, their connection feels organic, and the moves they make to see if they can find one another again after their flight are really nicely paired with the real-life topics of love that both characters are facing in their personal lives as well.
I am hesitant with stories like this. I don’t put almost any faith in love at first sight (I very strongly believe that we put way too much stock in that, when I think mutual attraction, communication, and willingness to grow together are far more important than the initial sparks), yet I still felt like I wanted the characters to take the chances that they did on something that had the potential to make them happy. While I don’t think you should wait around for crazy sparks or an amazing meet-cute to find love, I will never tell anyone not to pursue something that sparks their heart, because I am someone who believes it’s better to love and lose than to never love at all (which is, incidentally, one of the main subjects in question in this movie).
If I do want to throw some points in the movie’s direction again, if I think a bit about the story, I appreciate this movie for keeping the moves within reason. Going to a public place to look for someone you know is going to be there is hardly the most insane thing a person could do in pursuit of love, and really, that’s about the most drama that happens. Nobody’s making any sort of unrealistic and unattainable grand gesture, it’s more that these youths are taking risks in being disappointed by looking each other up. In that sense, it feels like there’s some cute romance, without being unreasonable or overly cheesy.
On the whole, it’s a pretty cute, inoffensive love story about straight kids, but movies like this go to show that there is still space for straight love stories in a world that’s trying to be a bit more diverse on the whole. If you’re looking for a quick, feel-good romance that you can down in about 1½ hours, I do actually recommend giving this one a shot.
Plot Summary (Spoiler Zone)
So, Love at First Sight is, of course, about Hadley and Oliver meeting on a flight to London when he offers her a phone charger at the airport and then by chance, because Oliver’s seatbelt is broken, he gets moved to the only other available seat on the flight, which is next to Hadley’s. Oliver asks a lot of questions from Hadley, but seems hesitant to give a straight answer to some of her return questions, like why is he going to London with a suit. Hadley admits that she’s going to her father’s wedding, and that she and he were very close, that he went to teach a semester at Oxford, that it was only meant to be for a semester, but then instead of coming home, he filed for divorce and started dating someone new. She hasn’t seen her father since she left and feels bitter and conflicted because her father “abandoned” her and her mother.
As they part ways at the London airport, Oliver gives Hadley his phone number, but since her phone is chronically low on battery, it dies before she can save it. She proceeds to go to her father’s wedding, making it just in time, and finds herself surprised that her father’s new wife is actually really great. Meanwhile, Oliver goes to attend what turns out to be a Shakespeare-themed memorial for his still-living mother, Tessa, who had made the decision that she’d like to attend her memorial so she can actually hear all the nice things people say about her.
After the wedding, Hadley off-hand hears some guests talking about a memorial that they’re going to and she puts the pieces together that this is the same memorial that Oliver was going to and, feeling an instinct to be there to support him, tries to find her way there before the wedding’s reception. She meets his family, gets over the initial shock of finding his mother still alive, and ultimately finds Oliver again. He’s happy to see her and she apologizes for complaining about her father on the flight and Oliver sympathizes with her, that it does kind of suck that Charlotte is clearly the new love of her father’s life. However, when Oliver keeps putting his feelings into statistics, Hadley encourages him to be more honest about his feelings and he lashes out. Though he apologizes before she heads back to the reception, they part on less-than-ideal terms, with Hadley forgetting her backpack at the memorial.
Oliver then goes on to give a speech about his mother, but after Hadley had called him out on using statistics to mask his true feelings, he seems to find his written speech to be too technical and realizes that he can’t quantify is mother or her life in numbers, because she was so much more than that. Oliver’s family admits that they had good feelings about Hadley and tease him a little bit, but he returns to his statistical ways and suggests that the chances of them working out are very low, what with the distance, etc. His father, Val, tells him that, if he had known Tessa was going to die of cancer, he still wouldn’t have changed anything about their relationship, and suggests that Oliver should take a risk on the chance that it might end up being something great. Finding the wedding invitation in Hadley’s backpack, the family then drives Oliver to the reception so that he can find Hadley. He admits to her his three greatest fears and she surprises him by kissing him.
The narrator then goes on to mention that they are together for 58 years and have a daughter together. On the whole, a pretty inoffensive and cute story.
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