One True Loves (2023)

Directed by Andy Fickman. Starring Phillipa Soo, Luke Bracey, Simu Liu, Michaela Conlin, Michael O’Keefe. [PG-13]

Sam is into his best friend, Emma, but she has eyes for Jesse. Emma and Jesse marry, but then Jesse disappears in a helicopter crash. Several years later, Emma has moved on and Sam has been knocked from the “friend zone” to the “fiancé zone”, but Jesse somehow survived (it’s never explained how) and returns home. As they say in sitcoms that are written at this low level: “Awwwkwarrrrd…” An unlikely scenario, yes, but one that could be plumbed for introspection or farce; sterile filmmaker Andy Fickman and a charisma-deficient cast choose banality. Aesthetically speaking, it’s basic cable drama level, with mundane coloring/lighting that encourages attentions to wander, set decoration and establishing shots borrowed from the same catalogs the Hallmark Channel pillages a hundred times a year. Too bloodless to be sappy, too contrived to be sincere, it’s the worst kind of mediocrity—a pitiful piffle with no artistic purpose, no value at all as original entertainment or layered study, and it steals a hundred minutes from the life of the viewer. If you do make it to the end credits, count the number of listed executive producers; the act of climbing so far into double digits and wondering what each of them could have possibly done to earn such a credit is more of a stimulating challenge than anything that came before it.

29/100