What’s Love Got To Do With It Review
A shambling mixed race rom-com that swerves on a strong exploration of the actual cultural issues at play, in service of a white savior romance between two leads without a drop of chemistry.
Zoe (Lily James) is an award-winning documentarian, looking for her next project. Kazim (Shazad Latif) is a hopelessly forlorn doctor who decides to give in to arranged marriage in an attempt to find someone. Zoe convinces him to let her film the process. As he meets a lovely lady, goes through the experiences of matchmaking, and deals with his family expectations, Kazim and Zoe grow closer together. Meanwhile, Zoe begins to understand some of her patterns with relationships, and takes a hard look at what chances she should take.
Directed by Shekhar Kapur, What’s Love Got To Do With It is a rom-com that plows straight into the action. If you’ve seen the trailer, you’ll have a shocking sense of deja vu in the first five minutes, as Kapur speeds through the vaguest of exposition dumps to set up the two romantic leads.
The leads themselves have a lot to answer for in this piece. While Shazad Latif is amicable enough in a relatively quiet lead role, he brings nothing of real interest to the film. Lily James is even more culpable; portraying a wholly unlikeable character without an ounce of charm. Zoe is a completely self-destructive, self-obsessed presence, who actively bags out her partner in front of him, treats her best friend with derision, and completely forgoes any ethical requirements associated with her profession. The fact she is the heroine of the piece is shocking; the fact that she ultimately shows the Muslim family that has inducted her how to deal with their complex family dynamics disappointing.
From a filmmaking perspective, the movie also fails. The grossly overexaggerated sign-posting, the fatuous self-aggrandisement, the complete lack of sensible plot, and the whiplash-inducing mid-scene tonal changes add up to a film that is nearly unbearably poorly made.
The only two bright spots in the movie are Asim Chaudhry’s Mo The Matchmaker, and Emma Thompson’s mother character Cath. Mo is hilariously funny in his brief few scenes, leaning heavily into the comical tonality the film could have had. Thompson is always fantastic, and while shockingly here she occasionally misses, even a film of this caliber can’t completely dull her enjoyability.
