Review: ‘Love Again’ (2023), starring Priyanka Chopra Jonas, Sam Heughan and Céline Dion

May 4, 2023

by Carla Hay

Sam Heughan and Priyanka Chopra Jonas in “Love Again” (Photo by Liam Daniel/Screen Gems)

“Love Again” (2023)

Directed by Jim Strouse

Culture Representation: Taking place mostly in New York City, the comedy/drama film “Love Again” (based on the novel “Text for You”) features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some Asians and African Americans) representing the working-class, middle-class and wealthy.

Culture Clash: Two years after her fiancé died in a tragic car accident, a children’s book illustrator sends lovelorn text messages to his old phone number, which is now being used as a work phone number by a music journalist, who begins dating her, but he doesn’t tell her that he’s the one who’s been getting her text messages. 

Culture Audience: “Love Again” will appeal primarily to people who are fans of the movie’s headliners and fans of the book on which the movie is based, but most viewers with enough life experience will be turned off and bored by this predictable and lackluster love story.

Sam Heughan and Céline Dion in “Love Again” (Photo courtesy of Screen Gems)

The painfully unfunny, boring and very outdated “Love Again” is a fake-looking romantic comedy/drama that also wants to be a Céline Dion commercial. The romance looks forced and unnatural. Everything is an embarrassment for everyone who made this junk. This movie is so dull and lacking in charisma, it makes anything on the Hallmark Channel (which churns out generic romance movies on a regular basis) look exciting in comparison.

Written and directed by Jim Strouse, “Love Again” is based on Sofie Cramer’s 2022 novel “Text for You.” There isn’t one single thing in this dreadful movie that is clever or surprising. In fact, it’s downright insulting to viewers that the “Love Again” filmmakers expect viewers to think that the mindless tripe that comes out of the central couple’s mouths is supposed to be “witty and charming” dialogue, when it’s the exact opposite.

“Love Again” (which takes place mostly in New York City) begins by showing children’s book illustrator Mira Ray (played by Priyanka Chopra Jonas) meeting up with her 34-year-old fiancé John Wright (played by Arinzé Kene) for a lunch date at a local café. John’s occupation is not mentioned in the movie. Mira and John exchange some lovey-dovey talk and make plans to meet up later.

Less than a minute after John waves goodbye to Mira while he’s walking on a sidewalk near the café, Mira hears the horrific sound of a car crash. As soon as you hear the crash and see Mira’s alarmed reaction, you just know that John was hit by a car. It’s later revealed that John was killed by a drunk driver at that moment.

The movie then fast-forwards to two years later. Mira has moved back home with her parents, who live in an unnamed city and state. Wherever they live, it’s within driving distance of New York City. Mira has taken a leave of absence from her job. The movie implies that Mira hasn’t been doing much with her life but moping around the house because of her grief over John’s death.

Mira’s perky younger sister Suzy Ray (played by Sofia Barclay), who was Mira’s roommate in New York City, has been leaving voice messages for Mira and begging her to move back to New York City so they can live together again. Suzy’s messages express concern, then frustration, and then anger. “Mom and Dad want their house back!” Suzy snaps in a message to Mira. After getting this message, Mira finally decides she’s going to move back to New York City and try to move on with her life without John.

At Mira’s job, her boss Gina Valentine (played by Celia Imrie) scolds Mira for drawing depressing illustrations when Mira is supposed to be drawing cheerful illustrations. Gina calls an intern named Molly (played by Camille Hatcher) into Gina’s office and tells Mira that Molly is a student on a scholarship at New York University and was raised by a single mother. Gina says to Mira about Molly, “She’ll lose your job if you don’t figure this out.” That type of unamusing line is what this movie is trying to pass off as “comedy.”

Meanwhile, at the fictional newspaper the New York Chronicle, music journalist/critic Rob Burns (played by Sam Heughan), a 35-year-old British immigrant, wants to start a podcast for the newspaper. However, his boss Richard Hughes (played by Steve Oram), who’s also British, wants Rob’s top priority to be for Rob to get an amazing interview with superstar pop singer Céline Dion. Richard says the newspaper is interested because she’s doing a comeback tour, and young people are discovering her music.

It just so happens that Rob, just like Mira, has a broken heart too. His fiancée Elizabeth, nicknamed Liz, dumped him a week before their planned wedding. The movie is vague about who Liz is, but she’s some kind of celebrity, so the breakup was all over the media. A humiliated Rob has become bitter and says he doesn’t believe in love. Of course, we all know he’s going to change his mind when he meets Mira.

At his job, Rob gets a new cell phone from the company. He’s told that he has to use this phone for work-related purposes. Rob’s gossipy and nosy co-worker Billy Brooks (played by Russell Tovey) warns Rob that this cell phone is probably just a way for their boss to spy on Rob. Rob has another co-worker named Lisa Scott (played by Lydia West), whom he’s somewhat attracted to, but she sees him more like an older brother.

One night, Mira is feeling lonely, so she texts some lovelorn “I miss you” messages to the phone number that John used to have. And guess who has this phone number now? Rob, who is surprised to get these messages from a stranger. He answers anyway, as someone who is confused but sympathetic about why she has contacted him.

On this particular night when Mira sends her first text message to the number that Rob now has, there’s a thunderstorm that knocks out the electricity at the same time in Mira’s apartment and Rob’s apartment. This movie is so corny, the only reason why this power outage happens is to make it more obvious that the phone is lit up with text messages in the dark. Rob doesn’t do what sensible people would do: Tell this stranger to stop texting him and/or block her number, because there would be no “Love Again” movie if the would-be couple and the filmmakers acted sensibly.

And so begins the tedious silliness of “Love Again,” which already reveals in the movie’s trailer that Mira and Rob start having an “emotional connection” online, but it takes a while for them to meet in person. However, it doesn’t take long for Mira to begin “sexting” her online “lover,” by saying things such as she wants to see him naked. Mira sends a barrage of texts that, by any standard, make her look unhinged. The movie tries too hard to convince viewers that Mira’s texts, which cross the line into harassment of a stranger, are all perfectly normal and acceptable, when they’re not.

When Rob and Mira meet in person and begin dating, Rob doesn’t take Lisa’s advice to tell Mira that he’s the person she’s been confiding in through text messages. We all know where this deception is going in the rom-com formula of “Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl. Boy finds a way to win back the girl.”

As for singer Dion (who portrays herself in the movie), even though she shares top billing for “Love Again,” she’s only in about 25% of the movie. And now that it’s been revealed that Dion wasn’t actually in the same room when she filmed scenes with her “Love Again” co-stars, it’s yet another reason why this movie looks so phony. Dion’s scenes (which range from bland to awkward) in “Love Again” are mostly cringeworthy, to put it mildly.

For starters, “Love Again” fails to make Dion look charming. In fact, she’s downright rude and inappropriate in many of her character interactions in this movie. At a press conference attended by Rob, she lectures Rob by telling him that he doesn’t know anything about love, just because he asked her about some of her romance-related song lyrics.

To be fair, Rob isn’t exactly courteous either, since he’s openly cynical about Dion’s music at first. She also gets annoyed when he looks at text messages on his phone while she’s answering his question at the press conference. “Love Again” takes a sharp turn into ridiculousness when Rob later does a one-on-one interview with Dion that turns into a therapy session where she tells him what he should be doing in his romance with Mira. Dion also reminisces about her own romance with her deceased husband/manager, René Angélil.

The dialogue in “Love Again” is simply horrendous and full of hokey clichés. There’s a scene where Rob tries to hint to Mira that he’s the one she’s been texting. Rob asks Mira, “Do you think it’s possible to fall in love with someone through their words?” Mira replies, “You know what they say: ‘Actions speak louder than words.'”

Mira has a quirk of asking people “would you rather” questions that make her look shallow and ditzy, because she says she judges people based on their answers to these hypothetical questions. One of these questions is “Would you rather have 10 cats or would you rather have one parrot on your shoulder for 22 hours a day?” (Mira thinks the only “correct” answer is to choose the parrot.) Another question is “Would you rather live your life with silent, uncontrollable gas or loud, uncontrollable sneezing?”

Who over the age of 12 talks like that? And who wants to date an adult who talks like that? Mira also doesn’t like it if anyone answers “neither” to her “would you rather” questions. She expects people to answer her questions as if she’s a prosecutor interrogating someone on a witness stand. Apparently, “Love Again” wants to convince people that this annoying trait of Mira’s is endearing.

As for Rob, he’s no prize either when it comes to his personality. Aside from his job and his monotonous romance with Mira, the most that the movie reveals about Rob is that he likes basketball and that he (just like Mira) is a terrible cook. There are some “red flags” about Rob’s life that would be noticed by someone who “falls in love” with him, if this movie tried to be realistic. For example, Rob never talks about his family, which remains a mystery throughout the story. Rob, like Mira, also doesn’t have any close friends.

Seriously, if the only people you can talk to about your love life are two co-worker acquaintances and a celebrity who’s really a stranger, then you’ve got bigger problems than how to court a love interest. But apparently, the “Love Again” filmmakers want viewers to ignore all of that and make Rob look like he’s a “great catch” as a bachelor. Yes, he’s physically good-looking, but a lot of his personality is quite monotonous and drippy.

Needless to say, Chopra Jonas and Heughan do not have believable chemistry together as an on-screen couple. The movie has some stunt casting with Nick Jonas (who married Chopra Jonas in 2018) in a not-funny-at-all cameo. Jonas portrays an idiotic and vain fitness trainer named Joel, who goes on one bad date with Mira before Mira meets Rob. This bad date happens to take place in the same restaurant and at the same time when Rob thinks he’ll meet Mira due to some miscommunication by text. It’s all just stilted acting and more contrived nonsense on display.

The supporting characters in “Love Again” are mostly hollow and terribly underdeveloped. Mira and Suzy like to hang out at a diner called Roxy’s, which is owned and managed by a widower named Mohsen, nicknamed Mo (played by Omid Djalili), who named the diner after his wife. Mo’s only purpose in the brief time that he’s on screen is to show that Mira actually talks to someone else besides Suzy about Mira’s love life.

“Love Again” tries to look “classy” with references to the opera “Orpheus and Eurydice,” which was part of the love story of Mira and John. The way “Orpheus and Eurydice” is used in the movie is supposed to look intellectually deep and emotionally moving. But it’s all such a pretentious façade in a low-quality movie, because the only music that “Love Again” really cares about promoting is Dion’s music. Various people, including Dion, sing some of her original hits and cover tunes throughout the movie.

During the end credits, the “Love Again” principal cast members are shown doing individual karaoke-styled singing of Dion’s music as part of this non-stop shillfest. Various scenes in “Love Again” also have obnoxious and blatant product placement—particularly of a candy brand that won’t be mentioned in this review, because this candy brand, just like Dion’s music, gets enough hawking in the movie. “Love Again” is such an abomination in a world filled with cheesy movies about unrealistic-looking romances, the title of the movie should be changed to “Never Again” to describe how people with good taste will feel about watching this creatively bankrupt flop more than once.

Screen Gems will release “Love Again” in U.S. cinemas on May 5, 2023.

Review: ‘Love Sarah,’ starring Celia Imrie, Shannon Tarbet, Shelley Conn, Rupert Penry-Jones and Bill Paterson

February 22, 2021

by Carla Hay

Celia Imrie, Shannon Tarbet and Shelley Conn in “Love Sarah” (Photo courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films)

“Love Sarah”

Directed by Eliza Schroeder

Culture Representation: Taking place in London, the dramedy film “Love Sarah” features a predominantly white cast of characters (with some people of Indian, Latino, African and Japanese heritage) representing the middle-class and the working-class.

Culture Clash: A rising-star pastry chef dies before launching a bakery business, but her best friend, 19-year-old daughter and estranged mother decide to band together and open the bakery in her memory.

Culture Audience: “Love Sarah” will appeal primarily to people who are interested in watching sentimental and harmless dramas.

Shelley Conn and Rupert Penry-Jones in “Love Sarah” (Photo courtesy of Samuel Goldwyn Films)

It might be a good idea not to watch “Love Sarah” when you’re hungry. The delectable pastries that are on display throughout this comedy/drama movie are among the highlights of this good-natured but ultimately bland and predictable story. However, the acting performances are watchable, and the movie has its heart in the right place, so it can be recommended viewing for anyone who’s in the mood for an uplifting story about forgiveness and following dreams.

Directed by Eliza Schroeder and written by Jake Brunger, “Love Sarah” starts off with the heartbreak of three very different London women whose lives have been shaken up by the death of a loved one named Sarah Curachi. On the day that she died, Sarah (played by Candice Brown), who’s in her late 30s, is shown riding her bicycle on her way to the empty storefront that she has rented in Notting Hill with her best friend Isabella (played by Shelley Conn), who’s about the same age as Sarah. Isabella is waiting outside impatiently because Sarah is late.

Meanwhile, Sarah’s mother Mimi Curachi (played by Celia Imrie), a retired circus owner/performer who lives by herself, is writing a letter of apology to someone who’s obviously her daughter. Viewers find out later that the letter was supposed to be sent to Sarah, who is Mimi’s only child.

Sarah is a single mother to a 19-year-old aspiring ballet dancer named Clarissa Curachi (played by Shannon Tarbet), who sometimes goes by the nickname Lari. Clarissa is a bit of a rebel because even though she’s training to be a dancer, she regularly smokes marijuana and she’s irresponsible with money.

It’s not shown in the movie, but Sarah was accidentally hit by a car, so she never made it to the storefront that day. Sarah and Isabella, who went to culinary school together, were renting the space with plans to open a bakery. The movie shows how the three most important people in Sarah’s life cope with her death.

After Sarah’s death, Isabella is shown in a distressed meeting with a leasing agent named Clive (played by Andrew Davis). Isabella is upset because, as a co-signer on the lease, she’s still responsible for paying the rent. Sarah was the star chef in this business partnership. (Sarah was good enough to train with celebrity chef Ottolenghi, as Isabella mentions in the meeting.) Because Sarah died, the bakery’s investors pulled out of the business.

Isabella (who quit her job as an investment banker) has been draining her savings to pay the rent. Despite a lot of pleading, the landlord won’t let Isabella out of the lease until another renter can take over the lease. Isabella decides it’s up to her to find another renter. The rental space, which is unfurnished and run-down, is definitely a “fixer upper” that had been vacant for quite some time before Sarah and Isabella rented it. Therefore, it’s going to be a big challenge to find someone else to take over the lease.

Meanwhile, Clarissa is also going through some tough times. She’s grieving over her mother’s death and hasn’t been able to concentrate in her dance classes. One night, her live-in boyfriend Alex (played by Max Parker), who’s also a dancer in the same class, tells Clarissa that their relationship isn’t working anymore, and he breaks up with her. Apparently, Clarissa’s name was not on the lease, because Clarissa is the one who has to move out.

With nowhere to go, Clarissa breaks into the storefront and spends the night there. The next morning, she’s about to be possibly arrested by the police, who were notified that there was a break-in. Isabella is there with two cops when she notices that Clarissa is sleeping on the floor. Isabella tells the cops that she knows Clarissa and can vouch for her, so the police officers leave.

An embarrassed Clarissa tells Isabella that she’s homeless because of the break-up with Alex. Isabella says that Clarissa can temporarily stay at Isabella’s place, but Clarissa declines the offer because she knows that Isabella’s home is so small that the only place that Clarissa would be able to sleep is on the couch. Clarissa tells Isabella that there’s only one other person she can ask for a place to stay. They both know who it is, and they both are reluctant to be in contact with her.

Sarah’s mother Mimi had been estranged from Sarah when Sarah died. That estrangement also extended to Clarissa, who has been avoiding seeing her grandmother for about a year or more, according to the inevitable conversation that Clarissa has later with Mimi. The movie shows Mimi grieving by avoiding spending time with her friends who invite her to social outings, and by spending time alone at home watching old film footage of herself when she used to be a trapeze artist in the circus.

What did Mimi do that was so awful that her daughter and granddaughter didn’t want to be in contact with her? The answer is revealed later in the movie. And what Mimi did is not as bad as you might think it is.

However, there are other hints in the story that Mimi’s fractured relationship with Sarah had been a problem for years. As the owner of a circus, Mimi often had to travel, and Sarah felt neglected when she was growing up. Mimi also has a prickly and overly judgmental personality that makes it hard for people to get close to her. Sarah’s father is not mentioned in the story, but it’s implied that Mimi was a single mother when she raised Sarah.

Sarah repeated the same pattern, by raising Clarissa as a single mother with no father around to help. The identity of Clarissa’s biological father becomes a subplot to this movie. After Sarah’s death, Clarissa is shown looking at her own birth certificate and seeing that the space for the father’s name has the word “unknown.”

It’s not a surprise to Clarissa, because she’s apparently been told all of her life that her biological father wasn’t going to be a part of her life. But now that Sarah has died, Clarissa wants to find out who her father is. Isabella mentions to Clarissa that Sarah always told her that Clarissa’s father was someone whom Sarah barely knew. Sarah wasn’t even sure what his name was.

Isabella has gone back to her investment job, working in a corporate office. Her heart isn’t in it, but she needs the money. And as fate would have it, Isabella has found another renter for the storefront. It’s a man who wants to turn the space into a wine bar. But lo and behold, shortly before Isabella is about to close this deal to sign over the lease to someone else, Clarissa shows up at Isabella’s office and begs her not to give up on the bakery.

Isabella is practical and tells Clarissa that she can’t afford to launch the bakery. Clarissa tells Isabella that she knows how to get the money to launch the business. And that leads to the inevitable scene where Clarissa reunites with Mimi. At first, Mimi is wary of Clarissa’s sudden reappearance in her life. And Mimi correctly guesses that what Clarissa wants from Mimi has something to do with money.

However, Clarissa is able to convince Mimi to invest in the bakery because she says it will be a way to honor Sarah. They decide to call the bakery Love Sarah. And the next thing you know—in the unrealistic way that movies conjure up ultra-convenient scenarios—Clarissa, Mimi and Isabella suddenly have the skills work on Love Sarah’s interior design and construction together. The first time that Clarissa takes Mimi to the dilapidated storefront, she says excitedly, “You can definitely see its potential.” Mimi quips in response, “What, as a crack den?”

Because a movie like this usually likes to have some romance as part of the story, there are two men who each end up becoming a potential love interest—one for Isabella, and the other for Mimi. There’s the predictable trope of the men making the first move, and the women playing hard to get, but we all know how these storylines are going to end.

Mathew Gregory (played by Rupert Penry-Jones) was a culinary school classmate of Sarah’s and Isabella’s. He suddenly shows up at Love Sarah one day and says he’s no longer working as a chef of a two-star Michelin restaurant. He also announces to Isabella that he wants to be a chef with her at the bakery. Isabella isn’t very happy to see Mathew because he used to date Sarah in their culinary school days, but he cheated on Sarah, so the relationship ended. Therefore, Isabella has a hard time trusting Mathew.

Sarah, Mathew and Isabella went to culinary school 20 years ago. Clarissa knows that the timeline of when Sarah and Mathew dated matches the timeline of when Clarissa could have been conceived. Mathew knows it too, so there’s some drama over a DNA test that results in Clarissa finding out whether or not Mathew is her biological father. However, Clarissa isn’t the only reason why Mathew wants to work at the bakery.

Mimi catches the eye of a man named Felix (played by Bill Paterson), who’s around the same age as she is. He lives in a building that’s directly across the street from the bakery. Mimi first notices Felix looking out his window at her while she’s at the bakery. After the bakery opens, Felix stops by and introduces himself as an inventor.

Felix is a little bit of an eccentric, and he tells Mimi, Isabella and Clarissa (who are all working at Love Sarah) that he’s invented a top-notch security system. Felix offers his services to install the security system because he says there have been break-ins and burglaries in the area. But it’s pretty obvious from the way he acts (he makes it known that he’s single and available) that the security system is just an excuse to try to get to know Mimi better. It should come as no surprise that she eventually warms up to his attention.

“Love Sarah” has a few very corny moments, such as when the spirit of Sarah is seen looking into the bakery and smiling at all the activity taking place. Fortunately, this ghostly appearance is only fleeting, because the last thing this movie needed was to turn into a “Ghost” ripoff, with Sarah appearing reincarnated in the bakery kitchen to guide the chefs in making the pastries. There’s also a very formulaic plot development where a would-be couple gets together, then has a falling out over a lie/misunderstanding, and then the person who feels betrayed has to decide if the other person deserves another chance.

All of the actors play their roles solidly and convincingly, but this movie isn’t going to win any awards. Some parts of the movie drag in a sluggish manner, so the pacing would’ve improved with better dialogue and more interesting things happening in the bakery. And there are some antics that Mathew does that are a little ridiculous and borderline stalker-ish, in his attempt to impress someone in the story.

Another flaw is how the movie clumsily handles Clarissa’s dreams of becoming a dancer. Clarissa’s work to become a professional dancer is shown in the beginning of the movie as a big part of her identity. And then, she’s not shown dancing at all when she decides to work full-time in the bakery. It’s as if the movie doesn’t want to explain how she handled not being in dance classes anymore because she had to be at Love Sarah. It’s not until the end of the movie that Clarissa’s identity as a dancer is hastily brought back up again, almost as an afterthought.

“Love Sarah” has a lot of sentimentality, but it isn’t a completely squeaky-clean movie, since there’s some occasional cursing in the film. For people interested in an overall feel-good movie, “Love Sarah” is a pleasant diversion. And it’s sure to delight foodies who love pastries because there’s an enticing variety that’s on display.

Samuel Goldwyn Films released “Love Sarah” in select U.S. cinemas and on digital and VOD on January 15, 2021.

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