Geez & Ann review – a romantic film with the right intentions but with misplaced execution

This review of the Indonesian Netflix film Geez & Ann contains no spoilers. The romance was released on the streaming service on February 25, 2021.

With Netflix releasing a flurry of romantic films, including third in the trilogy for To All the Boys, recent releases have a job to inspire and pull at the heartstrings. If you are not rooting for the lead characters by the end of the film, it’s a failed experiment.

Geez & Ann has all the hallmarks to be a wonderful romantic film — the two leading characters have the sweetness to bowl over the audience. They are both hopeless romantics; Ann is serious about “no lies” and promises, while Geez is hampered by his ludicrously strict mother. This is a romance that is marred by duty to commit to a parent’s wishes, and painfully, they have an over-abundance of love for each other — the story makes that clear in its exposition.

But Netflix’s Geez & Ann is a romance film with the right intentions but with misplaced execution. It shoehorns the problem with increasingly irritating melodrama when the focus should have been the pain endured by Geez and Ann. They are separated by a single entity (Geez’s mother), and the film hones in on that to the degree that shifts away from the romance. The film wants the audience to know why they are forbidden to love, but it is understood in the first act.

Geez & Ann becomes a romance that over exaggerates the wallowing — it’s not uncommon for a child to be forced into studying at a particular institute for a specific honour, yet the Indonesian film makes it feel like the betrayal of the century. The key ingredient for any film that involves love is the characters, which is a shame because leading actors have got their characters spot on.

With the film cycling many lies and promises broken, Geez & Ann becomes repetitive, and the ending isn’t that great either.