Two childhood friends now in their thirties must decide whether to follow their heads or their hearts once the man decides to follow his parents advice and enter into an arranged marriage in Pakistan.
Posters and backdrounds of What's Love Got to Do with It?
If you remember Last Christmas (2019) then you will have a rough idea of what to expect here with this rather formulaic, if colourful, drama. It all centres around a film being made by Zoe (Lily James) about the forthcoming assisted marriage of her lifelong friend Kaz (Shazad Latif). Her mother Cath (Dame Emma Thompson) lives next door to his family and so is relishing the family trip to Pakistan for the traditional wedding. Zoe is (as, I suspect, are we) pretty sceptical of the whole arrangement - getting married to someone youve only met on Skype, but proceed we do through a lively ceremony that allows Dame Emma to don her sari and dance for all she is worth (gin-fuelled!) whilst the predictable love triangle melodrama slowly, but predictably, plays out. It all comes to an head when they have returned home and she shows her film to all concerned and, just like this, it receives mixed and divisive reviews. I found this all very twee, middle class and vaguely judgmental which after a while I felt rather defeated the purpose in the first place. It is pretty clear from the start what is going to happen, and although the route to that conclusion isnt exactly a straight line, this leaves very little room for jeopardy to a plot you can see from Mars. Latif has a degree of charm to him, and some of the scenes with Lily James are quite engaging in a cheesy sort of way, but for the most part this is eminently forgettable fayre that will do fine on telly at Christmas.
Largely underwhelming, even if emWhat’s Love Got to Do with It?/em holds a few redeeming qualities. Its all competently shot and all that, the music for example is excellent - nice work, Nitin Sawhney & Co. The level of acting is also all good, though I wouldnt say there is necessarily anyone that stands out individually. On that note, Emma Thompson As usual I like her, but her character isnt the best - I feel like Ive seen her play the same (similar, at best) character one or two times before recently-ish, emLast Christmas/em for example. Shes merits more to work with. The story is one that is almost as old as time, like with the aforementioned I feel like Ive seen this plot play out many a time. It has a couple of unique elements I guess, but overall its pretty derivative. Im also not sold on Lily James Zoe being Player 1, so to speak... like, her character is fairly meh. In fact, Id go as far to say that Mariam Haques Jamila shouldve been the films key - that part of the story interested me the most of anything else portrayed onscreen. Haque and Michael Marcuss portion only features relatively smally, so I kinda wish they used them two instead as their bits are the most touching. All in all, its fine - but is too mundane and predictable to be definitively enjoyable, in my opinion of course.
