'If You Were the Last' bring some gravity to its flight
Peacock
There are a lot of movie ideas, many of them Netflix garbage about assassins or far-fetched love stories or both, that seem like concepts in search of a story anyone actually wants to watch.
“If You Were the Last,” on the other hand, feels inspired by a clever late-night “What if?” conversation over drinks: If two astronauts who were married to other people thought they would be floating in space forever, how long would it take until they got a little astronaughty? (Sorry. Blame the late-night drinks.)
The explorers at hand are Adam (Anthony Mackie) and Jane (Zoe Chao of “Your Place or Mine”), who have already passed a few years by dancing and watching movies and embracing the experience of having nothing but time and, conveniently, a ship that sustains itself and a coworker who’s fun and attractive. It’s a little raunchy and kinda funny and a bit cutesy (the deliberately cheap-looking views out their window suggest we’re only supposed to take this so seriously) but never too much for too long.
Most importantly, “If You Were the Last” takes a potentially limited setup and turns it into a cute movie about intimacy that actually understands and engages the challenge. This isn’t one of those stories where potential heartbreak is shrugged off because who cares about anyone else. While everything here goes down relatively easy, the central premise of “What do you do with inconvenient feelings and uncertainty about the past and present?” gets enough thought to feel like the bigger ideas aren’t totally floating away. (Ugh. More drinks.)
That might not be the case without the appeal of Mackie and Chao, who might be as much of a down-to-earth good hang as any movie astronauts you can remember. “If You Were the Last” is content to settle for a certain safe sweetness rather than something tougher about proximity and red flags and possibility, but it often just feels like date night done right.
Well, aside from the conversation it could spark about fidelity, time and compatibility. What could go wrong?
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