Summary
Vivian Blair is a program developer who has created an algorithm for a dating app. Wes Robinson is the CEO of the company trying to make money. Will the app be a success? Will they both find love? Who cares.
There are dark days as a film critic. With the number of movies released a year, there is the odd one that nearly breaks a person and forces them to question that passion. Romantic comedy My Perfect Romance is my first dark day of 2018, one where I nearly turned off the TV in the first few sobering minutes. I wish I was drunk, I do. I may have taken it with humour and wrote a sarcastic, positive review, but I am not drunk, and I am not in the mood to be sarcastic. This will not take long as it is not worth the mental effort.
For some peculiar reason, My Perfect Romance appears to be living in the past, where the editor uses tired techniques to drive the storyboard. The dire opening begins with Vivian Blair having a phone call with her contented sister, in the most transparently fake acting conversation ever; the editing approach was appalling, where on occasion the screen splits so you can see both of them on the phone chiming away about their love life, work and general day to day nuisances. Her sister’s husband just stands by and quips the odd line to add to the cheese; the mouldy, smelly cheese. It would not have surprised me in the slightest if the opening scenes turned into porn, with the lacklustre jolly piano music orchestrating generically good-looking couples having heterosexual sex. What makes it worse, is later that day, Vivian calls again to confide with her sister and she is still stood in the kitchen with her husband, almost like it was a continuation of the previous call.
The main issue, putting aside the pain of the whole experience, is that it is almost like the cast is too aware of the cameras. Whether this is a lack of directorial experience or just a dreadful cast, I’m not sure. You lose patience quickly with My Perfect Romance, as it takes a normally intelligent person to figure out where the “out of a can” plot is heading.
By the way, I do generally enjoy romantic comedies and the entire set up of My Perfect Romance is the norm for this genre. Vivian Blair represents the typical, predictable romantic trope; the program developer that works for an arrogant, apparently sleazy CEO. She’s designed a unique algorithm for an app that finds your perfect match using compatibility. The set up reminded me acutely of A Christmas Prince but at least that film had some production value and a cast that looked like they had a little depth. The rest of the story is about how they deliver this dating app to the nation, and they have to test it themselves. The entire relationship is dependant on the immature CEO laughing at Vivian’s efforts, whilst the program developer stresses about making it a success.
If you want to suffer, watch My Perfect Romance.
