Against All Odds, Mawkish Rom-Com Love at First Sight Is a Cozy Tearjerker
There’s no shortage of romantic comedies pumping out of the Netflix Content Mill, and Love at First Sight—with its remarkably boilerplate title, bland poster art and YA novel source material—seemed likely to be just one of many indistinguishable rom-com clones tumbling down off the streaming conveyor belt and into the homes of paying Netflix customers, who then dial them up to 1.5x speed and barrel through while looking at TikToks. I’m not one of these alleged people, nor am I even a frequent dabbler in the genre. In fact, I’ve only just recently begun to dip my toes into previously unwatched classics such as 10 Things I Hate About You, Bridget Jones’s Diary and The Proposal. So, perhaps it was curiosity born out of this cinematic world I’ve now opened myself up to which drew me to review Vanessa Caswill’s film, based on “The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight” by Jennifer E. Smith. Admittedly, my expectations were low, but nevertheless my heart and mind were open to the possibilities of love as brought to me by my good friend Ted Sarandos.
All joking aside, and with about 80% of the film working against my favor (70% of that figure due to the presence of Jameela Jamil), I must confess the regularity with which Love at First Sight brought me to blubbering tears. Due to my inexperience with the slate of romantic comedies that Netflix peddles in, perhaps Love at First Sight really is just more of the same—but I found myself shockingly taken under its corny, sentimental spell. At the very least, it is exceptional in being bestowed with the captivating charm of Haley Lu Richardson, whose chemistry with co-lead Ben Hardy (Bohemian Rhapsody, The Voyeurs) enthralls even as the dialogue they’re reciting is worthy of cringe.
Richardson plays Hadley, and Hardy plays Oliver: Two college kids who meet by chance in JFK while idling prior to a London flight, one en-route to a wedding, the other to a so-called “living memorial.” Both are forever scarred by the terror of being caught off-guard—yes, even when it comes to love! For Hadley, it stemmed from her father (Rob Delaney) announcing his divorce from her mother shortly after taking on work in the U.K.; for Oliver, it was his mother’s diagnosis of lung cancer, the trauma of which shaped him into a statistics obsessive (by the end, we learn that his area of research is the title of the film’s source novel).
Such statistics, probabilities and likelihoods proliferate the film over the course of its 24-hour, in-universe time period, as explained daintily by the resident fourth wall-breaking fate/guardian angel hybrid played by Jamil. Jamil’s nameless, character-shifting spirit pops up as a revolving door of strangers with the same shared face, all encountering Hadley and Ben to guide the would-be lovers on their journey into one another’s arms. Jamil has garnered an infamous reputation on social media in the years since her stint of The Good Place, but distinct from that, her presence in the film is unshakably grating. She narrates Love at First Sight’s weakest spots (attempts at comedically twee, omniscient character insights) and is just kind of annoying. She’s not funny or charming like the two young actors her character is shepherding, and her real-life persona does grant her an inherent air of unlikability on top of it. Maybe the filmmakers could have cast someone better, but maybe I’m being a bit too harsh on Jamil—the character is undoubtedly annoying, so maybe annoying is what they were looking for, anyway.
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