PLUS ONE
Jeff Chan, Andrew Rhymer (2019)
2 STARS
As a light watch that may or may not bring a tear to your eye, have you screaming at the screen ‘kiss her’, and leave you with that warm fuzzy feeling in your stomach knowing that the guy got the girl and they’ll live happily ever after, you won’t be disappointed by the charming Plus One.
This rom-com truly delivers on the com, most notably by leading lady Maya Erskine, of Pen15 hilarity, whose masterful comedic timing provides the laughs in a natural manner. Jack Quaid, as the hopeless romantic with unreachable standards, pairs like cheese and wine with the outlandish Erskine. While this, ordinarily, would be a great thing, it’s actually where the film falters.
At no point could one imagine that our protagonists won’t end up together. They’re a perfect pair and everyone knows it. Plus One is so by the numbers, even a rom-com novice could tell you that one plus one equals two. Disappointingly, the film offers nothing new in the way of plot progression or character development. Almost every scene could be copy and pasted to any other rom-com, to the extent that I actually thought I’d seen a film with this exact premise before.
If you’re looking to mindlessly while away a couple of hours without having your wits or emotions tested, then this is the film for you. You’ve seen it before and you’ll see it again, you know the plot and you know how it ends, but sometimes that’s exactly what people look for in a film and to those people, I say go for it, but for the rest of us, let’s keep an eye on the comedic career of Maya Erskine and look elsewhere for our romance.