Summary
It’s an easy watch but not necessarily in a good way — it fails to challenge itself and instead relies on predictability.
Netflix film Seriously Single was released on the platform on July 31. This review of the comedy contains no spoilers. Add it to your list now.
During a turbulent 2020, being single has a new meaning. It means you question yourself every day when couples and families repeatedly reveal their lives on social media. Is being single that bad? Should I be trying harder not to be single? It’s a conundrum that gets the best of us, especially during a crisis, but one where the narrative needs to urgently change.
Seriously Single is about that singlehood narrative. It follows a hopeless romantic named Dineo that seems to find herself at the sharp end of break-ups often and regularly believes she has found “the one” after a few intense dates. Dineo is the halfway-house millennial — a character that does not understand how to define her happiness in a world that is no longer based on traditional relationships.
Seriously Single sees the character hopelessly fall in love with a certain man that gives her a window of hope that she’s finally found someone she can be with for the rest of her life. It’s a story of singlehood and pitfalls.
But the Netflix film’s main message is being in love with yourself. Yes, I know that will encourage rolled eyes — many assume loving yourself means looking at yourself in the mirror and pouting. But self-love, self-care is a concept often misunderstood and forgotten when many want to embark into a relationship and often sacrifice their inner happiness to ensure that they are not left lonely. But again, what is loneliness? It’s all about perspective. Loneliness is what you define it as and the film gets that message across quite well.
However, apart from the deeper meaning which could easily be divulged, Seriously Single is quite a basic film that softly rolls through the plot points at a steady pace. It’s an easy watch but not necessarily in a good way — it fails to challenge itself and instead relies on predictability. The lead character is purposefully a caricature of herself, surfacing her love-needy personality to make sure the audience understands the individual problem.
If you can focus on the message then for a single person, Netflix’s Seriously Single has some basis for debate within your inner self but as a film, this is, unfortunately, a comedic dud.
