Review – Love Again

Nothing harder to recover from than a broken heart. Unless the recovery is helped by love, again.

There is a slow resurgence of romantic comedy starting to filter through to the big screen. Nothing on what it was in the 90s and certainly nothing on Netflix around Christmas. But there’s something different about a modern-day rom-com which Love Again is a perfect example of. That difference is a drama with a flitter of comedy.

Mira Ray is a successful children’s author and illustrator. She’s also madly in love with the idea of growing old with John. That is until a drunken driver takes his life as he was walking along the street.

Years pass and Mira still struggles with the idea of life without him. Having left the big city and now living with her parents in the country, Mira doesn’t seem any closer to finding peace. That is until her Sister Suzy gives her some tough love and forces her back to the city.

Suzy continues with her tough love and forces her on a date with a personal trainer. Realising he was after one thing Mira wasn’t ready to do, her chances of moving on seemed bleak.

Taking some advice from a friend, Mira tries to talk to John’s ghost. Finding it weird she decides to text his old number instead. Since it’s been some three years, John’s number has been put back into the pool. The new owner is a work phone for Rob Burns.

After weeks of reading Mira’s intimate and personal messages, Rob never replies. Nor does he block the number. Instead, he finds a reason to meet her in person. It turns out it’s the Opera about Orpheus and Eurydice which just happens to be playing at a local theatre. So Rob attends every show until he finds her.

By chance, they meet and have an instant, but random, connection. And so the romance starts helping them both find love, again.

The most random part of Love Again is the glue that holds it all together. And that glue is Celine Dion. She is singing the title song from the soundtrack which happens to also be called Love Again. Celine Dion is the cupid in Mira and Rob’s love story. She brings her quirky “no bull” attitude and radiates off the screen.

Leading the cast is the untouchable Priyanka Chopra Jonas (Citadel, The Matrix Resurrections, Isn’t it Romantic) as Mira. Bringing her natural beauty and cementing her place as a romantic love interest in Hollywood, Chopra Jonas also brings a certain class to this film. Not only does she look great in sweatpants and an oversized hoody, but there is also this aura of female empowerment she portrays. This is shown when she kicks her date out of the taxi. Or maybe that was a convenient excuse to kick her actual husband who plays the personal trainer out of the taxi.

Mira’s love interest, Rob is played by Sam Heughan (To Olivia, The Spy Who Dumped Me, Lego DC Super-Villians). Finding that perfect balance between a clumsy, hopeless, broken-hearted man coming out the other side as a strong hopeful confident gentleman, seemed to be a perfect fit for Heughan. There were a few occasions where it was a fine line between choppy acting and aloof character. There was a moment after his one on one with Celine Dion when he pulled his phone out of his pocket. It very much felt like he was finding his mark, reacting then continuing with the scene. But that could have also been his character unaware of how to manage the moment.

Back to the point about how this, like other rom-com coming out this year, has more drama than comedy. Another example of this is You People on Netflix starring Jonah Hill. The movie whirls around the topic of racism. Or Spoiler Alert starring Jim Parsons which tackles the brutal truth of cancer. Love Again uses death as its baseline making this comedy not so funny for the most part. The comedy that it does inject is very much set up to make sure you don’t miss it. For example, in the scene where they first officially meet at the Opera and Mira turns around and walks right into someone. It’s funny, no denying that we’ve all done it. But it was very much set up to tick the box and show there is comedy in this film.

Love Again is your classic love story. It includes people struggling to find love and then they find each other. Not to mention the use of confessing said love publicly. There are some adorable moments that will leave you smiling and certainly wishing you could find love (if you haven’t already) off the apps. But this movie comes with a kind message, that people come with a history and sometimes we need to accept that and in this case, embrace it.