Meet Cute is a 2022 American Movie from Amazon Studios. Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson lead the cast. The movie also stars Deborah S. Craig, Sierra Fisk, Kirk Kelly, Rock Kohli, Wesley Holloway. The Amazon Prime website lists the film genre as Science Fiction, Comedy, Drama, Fantasy, Romance. But you better read this review first. You should have been warned at the content advisory: violence, alcohol use, smoking, foul language, sexual content. But that is not all. Let me tell you this before I start my review: beware spoilers. But also, beware triggers.
Meet Cute: The story
We meet Sheila as she looks smitten at Gary in a bar. It seems as if it is love at first sight, long sight, even and he seems to share the feeling. But a mix of sci-fi, violence, and trigger words take what looked at first like romance, magic and fate into something deeper and a little if not a lot weirder. It seems that Sheila is using a time machine to relieve that one moment over and over again and even to turn Gary into her idea of the perfect man.
Meet cute, really?
This one is going to split people properly especially those looking for a light-hearted romance on Amazon Prime This is because Meet cute the movie is anything but. This is not your standard light-hearted romance. Even the comedy is dark. The whole movie is uncomfortably realistic, real and thought-provoking. It resembles an indie-like effort, unencumbered by Hollywood glam and strass. The whole thing is carried by a very deceiptful title, and I came out of it thinking “definitely not as cute as the title would suggest”.
Something is wrong with Meet Cute
I do like romance with depth. And I don’t mind the inevitable holes of every movie that attempts to use or explain time travel. However, the relationship between Sheila and Gary ends up sounding like an emotional blackmail. It is a sort of “you’re my only reason to live”, “stay with me or I’ll kill myself”. Don’t get me wrong. It was clear that, meeting Gary that fateful night at the bar was Sheila’s newly-found reason to live. And it was clear that in her state of mind, she could not believe that this could go beyond the first meeting night. She would think that the next day would inevitably bring with it shadows. Her sci-fi-aided self-made groundhog night ends with what seems to be a decision to live beyond that day/night. So, that is positive and I like that it shows growth and a will to try on her part, and positivity in general. However…
The discomfort in Meet Cute
Gary and Sheila meeting is the formation of an unhealthy relationship on a bed of time travel with a side of unwarranted romantic cheer. The latter frustrated me particularly as two old women, (wisdom and experience as I call them) named love the fact that Sheila wanted to shelter Gary from pain, and therefore change him. I know for some, Gary’s character seemed ungrateful towards such endeavours from her. And yes, the time-travelling suntan owner, June, does say “you erase the pain, you erase the person”. But there is more to it than that. It is irresponsible to want to remove all barriers to life without any understanding of, care for, or responsible behaviour towards the inevitable collateral damages not least how the natural challenges of life build character, knowledge, self-trust and self-confidence.
The lead actors and characters in Meet Cute
Kaley Cuoco is amazing and highly convincing in as Sheila. If you think you will see Penny from The Big Bang Theory, no worries, she is nowhere to be seen. From the outset, Kaley Cuoco gets you into THIS movie. She is superb. It makes it all the more annoying to see her on the latest train to make Pete Davidson a heartbreaker. Yes, I would not know about him if it wasn’t for a whole set of his relationships that ended up in my feed in spite of me. Do you feel sometimes these people pay known people to fake relationships to bring an unknown into their screen world? Anyway, Pete Davidson was good in the role, in that, I associated him with Gary. Basically, I felt like they gave him a role that fittted his personality: he just had to act like himself. There is actually nothing wrong with that since it fitted the need and to be honest, there was not much to Gary and Sheila, as in Kaley Cuoco, eclipsed mostly everyone with her acting in this.
The Meet Cute character Sheila played by Kaley Cuoco
Kaley Cuoco rendered the complexity of the emotions that Sheila daily battles with the aloof naturalness of self-identification. There is not a time that I could not feel her struggle, her fedupness, her. This shows not just great acting but great casting, great directing and great script. This is a dark comedy but it does make you smile and cry when you get it. There are brighter spots of smile with dashes of shadow of course like the facial contorsions and expression of Sheila as she looked at the person who ran her overor Chai, the ice cream vending character played by a barely recognisable Hari Nef and her assortment of ice cream options. And of course, June. Deborah S. Craig is a wonderful June. Her comedy is subtle but effective. She did not need to be there long to make her mark.
Meet Cute: Will you love me tomorrow?
The feeling that Sheila carries from a wounded childhood is familiar even to those who have not been there. You simply have to have sought love and have met something that resembles it enough. And there lies the fear best summed up in the title of the popular soundtrack already haunting the trailer: Will you love me tomorrow? Thinking about it, this would have made such a better title for this. Because we are constantly reminded how she feels because of Kaley Cuoco’s acting and the excellent team around her.
Our empathy
We are so constantly reminded of how she feels that it kind of takes over the space of why she feels so, which would trigger more of the audience empathy. I could easily give this movie an 8 out of 10. But, the fact that it was recommended to me at the back of several romantic comedies, was introduced as such from its title to its genre and was completed without any sense or acknowledgement in the script of the toxicity of the resulting relationship is concerning. For that, I will have to downgrade this superb little movie to 6.5… ok maybe 7.
Editor’s notes
Meet Cute Movie was directed by Alex Lehmann. Producers include Akiva Goldsman, Santosh Govindaraju, Dan Reardon, Gregory Lessans, and Rachel Reznick. At the time of writing, Meet Cute was streaming on Amazon Prime Video streaming service at Meet Cute on Amazon Prime
