A messy American girl and a very organized young English guy meet by chance at the airport before traveling to London and… things happen. With Haley Lu Richardson and Ben Hardy. Netflix premiere.
The voiceover of this romantic comedy – a little “off” and a little “on”, based on various characters, such as fairy godmothers, played by Jameela Jamil – deals with numbers, possibilities, statistics. A bit like in an Argentinian film LOVE (FIRST PART)What the narrator and later one of the characters do here is calculate risks and probabilities as if they were an insurance company. A complete framework to essentially answer the question of the title of this adaptation of the novel. The statistical probability of love at first sight» the Jennifer E. Smith.
Hadley Sullivan (the beautiful Haley Lu Richardson, from THE WHITE LOTUS) is a disorganized and chaotic girl who is late for everything, always runs out of battery and usually has to act improvised. As we arrive at the airport and the voice tells us a series of facts about the difficulties of flying in New York on December 20th, Hadley misses a flight to London. He’s traveling to his father’s wedding with his new British wife, and perhaps the delay is because he doesn’t really want to go. But his father offers to pay for another flight, a business flight leaving shortly (how many flights in a row does the same airline have to London?), and he has no choice but to accept.
While trying to charge his battery on a malfunctioning chip, a blonde Brit named Oliver (Ben Hardy, who played drummer Roger Taylor) discovered BOHEMIAN RHAPSODY) offers help with your cable. Their eyes remain locked on each other and one can imagine the probabilities of the title there increasing rapidly. He is almost his opposite: he studies statistics, likes to calculate everything and hates surprises, which will explain the reasons for this later. After chatting and making a series of innocent jokes, the two grab a bite to eat at the airport and almost miss the other flight. But not. You enter. She’s in business. He in business. But our fairy godmother intervenes – giving everyone a higher chance of winning everything – and Oliver is put into business too.
The first and best part of the film – just over half an hour – continues in flight. They talk, they tell each other some things and we get to know them better as they fall in love. He’s wearing a suit and she assumes he’s going to a wedding, but in reality he’s not. It will become clear what the reason for his journey is, which he doesn’t want to reveal because the journey is so painful for him. When you arrive at Heathrow, everything you can imagine happens. He writes down her phone number, but the chaotic Hadley loses it because she drops her phone and it instantly “dies.” And no, it doesn’t say his full name either. From then on, everyone will deal with their own situation in London as, deep down, they try to figure out how to reconnect.
THE STATISTICAL PROBABILITY… It has all the classic elements of the most conventional romantic comedy, but at least in the first half it works quite well. Although there is no chemistry between them (more for him than for her), there is something charming in the way they meet and that Hadley prefers traveling around London to find him rather than the awkward wedding her father to stay. . When you know what Oliver has really come for – something much more dramatic – you will understand many things about his personality and how the stories of both can be combined from opposite sides, if you will.
The best thing about a film made with all the conventions and neutral/tourist style of Netflix romantic comedies is the importance it also gives to the personal and family lives of the protagonists. Although the focus is on their relationship, much of the film focuses on Hadley’s relationship with her father (Rob Delaney) and Oliver’s relationship with his peculiar family of actors. Shakespeareanos (played by actor/director Dexter Fletcher and actress BRIDGET JONES, Sally Phillips). And these aspects – especially that of the boy’s family – add drama to a film that becomes more and more emotional as the minutes pass.
The problem is that whatever credibility the film had gained is lost through a buildup of resources inherent in the formula. Although everything is presented as a fantasy at first, at a certain point the accumulation of coincidences and whims becomes forced and difficult to maintain. At the same time, the constant quoting of numbers, possibilities and calculations – which Oliver does as often or even more often than the narrator – becomes a repetitive mechanism. What was funny for a while becomes a burden that the film eventually no longer knows what to do with. This is why a romantic comedy that had a 75 percent chance of success ends up, for example, dropping to 50 percent.
