Love Guaranteed(Netflix)
Starring Rachael Leigh Cook, Damon Wayans Jr.
Directed by Mark Steven Johnson
Rating: **
A blah courtroom drama blended into a bland rom-com…this is the best description for Love , Guaranteed , a trivial pursuit of courtship and love nudging a social issue but barely able to stand on its high-heeled feet.
Outwardly Love Guaranteed is a well-designed blues-chaser with two good-looking actors in well-tailored clothes and a blasé attitude. But the façade of sophistication wears thin as the characters begin to appear terribly emptied-out and uninspired.
The yarn takes off well and then settles down to being a yawn. Susan Whittaker(Rachel Leigh Cook ) is one of those client-less lawyers who probably specializes in nuisance litigation. “Nuisance” shows up in the form of Nick Evans(Damon Wayans Junior) who seems to be one of those idle-rich sorts in pursuit of a goal in life.
The “goal” is a dating site which “guarantees” love when we know that no one can do that: guarantee love. While the rest of the world wants to take China to the court for a virus fraud, Nick goes to court for a dating fraud.
In the hands of a comic auteur like David Cronenberg the idea could have melted and merged into a meaningful mound. The half-baked writing and the vapid characters(Susan Whittaker’s two assistants, one camp male the other a ditsy female, behave like Laurel and Hardy) doesn’t help in giving a definitive shape to the film’s insipid aspirations.
Heather Graham(remember her sterling presence in Drugstore Cowboy?) makes a belated entry as a spoilt heiress willing to throw millions at a litigant to quash a legal suit. It’s like trying to crush a fly with a steamroller. Nothing fits. Everything happens in fits. And that includes the intelligent moments that show up once in a while, too rarely to demand patient viewing.
Interestingly the hero being a Black American is not an issue here. The film embraces colour blindness and a cultural naivete that wants us to applaud the film’s racial freedom in a film that doesn’t respect the audiences’ basic intelligence.
