The enduring appeal of the romantic-comedy lies in the withholding of the pay-off, along with the audience’s investment in who gets together with whom. Like a murder mystery, there are ringers and red herrings. What’s Love Got to Do with It? meets these criteria, but it doesn’t do a lot more than that. The plot mechanics offer few surprises, although whether that represents a feature or a bug depends on your tolerance for the rom-com genre in general. What does feel fresh is the treatment of the male lead’s Pakistani heritage, which is presented in an appealing if idealistic light. The lead roles are filled by charismatic actors whose chemistry is palpable, and there’s enough broad comedy and glittering set pieces to make for a comfy viewing experience even if you can clearly see where the story is going from the very first scene.
In Jemima Khan’s script, Zoe (Lily James) and Kazim (Shazad Latif) are childhood best friends, having grown up in neighboring residences in London. Pakistani immigrants, his extended family is vibrant and boisterous. Her family is just her mother, Cath (Emma Thompson), who has latched onto Kazim’s family in the role of the wacky and awkward neighbor. The opening scene gives us Zoe and Kazim sitting in a tree in their communal garden, sharing a cigarette and already displaying the kind of breezy intimacy that’s practically a smoking gun. The tension that results is less about whether they’ll hook up than when.
The obstacle to that happening involves Kazim’s acquiescence to his family’s plan for his arranged marriage–or, as he spins it, an “assisted marriage.” His parents present themselves as paragons of the value of this system, having only met on the day of their own arranged wedding. Zoe, as a Westerner, is baffled and scandalized by this practice, and the culture clash takes up all the space in her interactions with Kazim. Seeking to understand his willingness to participate in what seems to her a barbaric and outdated custom, she proposes a plan: she’ll follow Kazim and his family around with her camera for the purpose of making a documentary film on the subject.
She might have hopes of manipulating the outcome of Kazim’s matrimonial destiny, but that’s a level of interiority and calculation that the script doesn’t offer. Instead, the story sticks to predictable beats and one-dimensional motivations. We’re told that Zoe is an award-winning documentarian, but there’s little evidence of craft or finesse in her approach which mainly involves lugging a camera around and pointing it at people during awkward moments. She rips off a trope from When Harry Met Sally by interviewing Kazim’s parents on a couch talking about their own arranged wedding day. Occasional glimpses of her footage show blurry shots and haphazard framing, but beyond that, her career as a filmmaker feels like little more than a plot device.
None of this would work without the charm of the actors in the lead roles. Their evident chemistry keeps the storyline humming through Kazim’s Skype calls with prospective wives, a lavish set-piece in Pakistan for his hastily-arranged wedding and the inevitable confrontation between the culturally mis-matched but undeniably smitten old friends. James whips off a fair bit of clever word play (Zoe’s documentary is titled “Love, Contractually”), and Latif channels a bit of Hugh Grant’s hesitant, floppy-haired charisma, but the story doesn’t give the two actors much beyond their natural appeal to act as gravity pulling them towards the inevitable smooch. The cultural and religious divides that separate them prove as insubstantial as Zoe’s credibility as a filmmaker, and the end result feels more like a half-baked movie her character might have made as an excuse to kiss her best friend. That might be cute and relatable, but it doesn’t make for much of a satisfying story arc.
Photo courtesy of SHOUT! STUDIOS
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