Two childhood friends now in their thirties must decide whether to follow their heads or their hearts once the man decides to follow his parents' advice and enter into an arranged marriage in Pakistan.
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If you remember "Last Christmas" (2019) then you will have a rough idea of what to expect here with this rather formulaic, if colourful, drama. It all centres around a film being made by "Zoe" (Lily James) about the forthcoming "assisted" marriage of her lifelong friend "Kaz" (Shazad Latif). Her mother "Cath" (Dame Emma Thompson) lives next door to his family and so is relishing the family trip to Pakistan for the traditional wedding. "Zoe" is (as, I suspect, are we) pretty sceptical of the whole arrangement - getting married to someone you've only met on Skype, but proceed we do through a lively ceremony that allows Dame Emma to don her sari and dance for all she is worth (gin-fuelled!) whilst the predictable love triangle melodrama slowly, but predictably, plays out. It all comes to an head when they have returned home and she shows her film to all concerned and, just like this, it receives mixed and divisive reviews. I found this all very twee, middle class and vaguely judgmental which after a while I felt rather defeated the purpose in the first place. It is pretty clear from the start what is going to happen, and although the route to that conclusion isn't exactly a straight line, this leaves very little room for jeopardy to a plot you can see from Mars. Latif has a degree of charm to him, and some of the scenes with Lily James are quite engaging in a cheesy sort of way, but for the most part this is eminently forgettable fayre that will do fine on telly at Christmas.
Largely underwhelming, even if <em>'What’s Love Got to Do with It?'</em> holds a few redeeming qualities. It's all competently shot and all that, the music for example is excellent - nice work, Nitin Sawhney & Co. The level of acting is also all good, though I wouldn't say there is necessarily anyone that stands out individually. On that note, Emma Thompson: As usual I like her, but her character isn't the best - I feel like I've seen her play the same (similar, at best) character one or two times before recently-ish, <em>'Last Christmas'</em> for example. She's merits more to work with. The story is one that is almost as old as time, like with the aforementioned I feel like I've seen this plot play out many a time. It has a couple of unique elements I guess, but overall it's pretty derivative. I'm also not sold on Lily James' Zoe being 'Player 1', so to speak... like, her character is fairly meh. In fact, I'd go as far to say that Mariam Haque's Jamila should've been the film's key - that part of the story interested me the most of anything else portrayed onscreen. Haque and Michael Marcus's portion only features relatively smally, so I kinda wish they used them two instead as their bits are the most touching. All in all, it's fine - but is too mundane and predictable to be definitively enjoyable, in my opinion of course.
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