Neither she nor he is all that in ‘Love, Guaranteed’
Netflix
Like spraying an empty air freshener to cover a fart, “Love, Guaranteed” claims to indict fraudulent presentations of romantic possibility while becoming exactly that, never glimpsing anything that resembles a legitimate, enduring connection. And I expected so much more from the director of the lousy “When in Rome” and the writers of the so-cleverly titled “Falling Inn Love,” which I haven’t seen but really sounds great.
And if you say I shouldn’t judge a movie by its title, perhaps Nick (Damon Wayans Jr.) also shouldn’t judge and discard his dates by first impression. Of course, the women are all cartoonishly unappealing -- one talks only about cats even though she doesn’t have one; another brings her parents along and only communicates through them -- that the implication is that every one of the nearly 1,000 women Nick finds on the Love, Guaranteed app are obviously beneath him. In the real world, a man whining about the failure of a dating site’s promise to find him love has a sinister, incel feel to it, and that’s not quite the stuff of vacation reading and sick-day viewing to which this remarkably lazy movie aspires. So Nick is drawn as incredibly sweet and caring (he’s also a physical therapist who helps some patients for free!) despite his romantic disappointments, and merely a flawless catch waiting to meet someone without any deal-breaking quirks.
That, apparently, is Susan (Rachael Leigh Cook of “She’s All That”!), a lawyer who just works too darn hard to have time for a relationship even though her practice doesn’t have enough clients to afford a water cooler (but can afford two irritating colleagues, pulled straight from ‘90s stereotypes of gay men and gossipy women). Never mind that Susan, who’s helping Nick sue Love, Guaranteed for false advertising, is immature, socially awkward and not especially a good attorney, or that her attempt to prioritize the script’s one interesting moral dilemma is completely dismissed because “Love, Guaranteed” doesn’t want anything of substance or depth to wake viewers who stream this with the intention of napping midway, which is all of them.
On one hand, it’s nice to see Cook get another chance to anchor a movie. On the other, she is hardly her best here, her expressions always a beat behind and her mannerisms almost suggesting that Susan believes she is a character in a crappy romantic comedy. Which, well, she is, and that might have been mildly intriguing from a narrative perspective. In practice, though, it’s beyond weird that Susan’s actions are so transparently contained by the genre’s waxy residue, totally unaware of its own pathetic obviousness. Heather Graham, nearly duplicating her role in the even more unbearable “Desperados,” plays the lifestyle guru in charge of Love, Guaranteed, and the movie seems intent on making everyone involved look desperate for participating. Wayans is an immensely funny and charming actor who shouldn’t have to do junk to get a lead role, but here he’s asked to play a weirdly neutered version of himself, and it doesn’t work -- and not just because Nick and Susan share a disposable moment or two and the movie wants that to count as enough for a life-long commitment. Hey, Wayans and Lamorne Morris (star of “Desperados”) were both on “New Girl,” so I hope that right now they’re talking about how maybe taking dopey Netflix projects isn’t the way to go.
Somehow neither harmful nor harmless, “Love, Guaranteed” has one funny joke: when Nick rattles off his mediocre dates as “the one who …” and Susan recognizes that he talks about these experiences as if they were “Friends” episodes. Then the film returns to this comparison like three more times to ensure that even the thing that we briefly liked no longer feels sweet and intelligent. The only thing “Love, Guaranteed” can guarantee is that we’d all rather be watching “Love, Indubitably.”
D+
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