Louis Bickford

Charming and engaging film. Beautiful location, great acting. Powerfully insightful without being too obvious about the lesson.

This is an example of good acting combined with a ridiculous plot. I feel very sorry for the actors but they soldier on with real professionalism. Unfortunately, even the acting can’t really save it. That said, I watched it anyway, so that says something, but only barely. I was mostly multitasking while it was on. The script is mediocre at best, and the convolutions of plot are, well, just absurd, especially in the second season, which is full of implausible and random nonsequiturs, with dozens of people improbably dying left and right, or doing pathologically weird things. There are multiple often extreme subplots which don’t connect very well, and a long dream scene which is as boring as it is confusing. I do not recommend it but, again, the acting is impressive, especially since they are working with truly awful material, and so is the cinematography (beautiful scenes, nicely shot, in both Australia and Ireland).

This is a very bad movie. The plot is absurd and annoying and it is very poorly directed, with a schmaltzy lighting, hyperbolic music, and cloying relationship development. Spoiler alert: The idea that two sets of siblings fall in love with each other’s partners and look deeply into the eyes of the sudden new lover within a few hours of meeting them, although drawing on a standard trope, is so glaringly implausible here (not to mention impossibly awkward and uncomfortable to imagine in real life) that it gives a bad name to the RomCom genre, of which this is among the worst examples. Unlike other movies with absurd plot lines (like the silly but entertaining thriller “Double Jeopardy”), this dumb script goes out of its way to get noticed. The one thing I liked (in the first 2-3 minutes, before the overacting begins) was the A-For-Effort attempt to show hollywoody approval of biracial couples, and LGBT and disabled people. A tiny redeeming element was that everyone seems nicely comfortable with ASL … but except for that, the movie is a snooze at best and truly bothersome at worst. Add it to your list of bad movies to be watched, but don’t expect anything better.

The review below by “The Gentleman” is perfect. I couldn’t possibly say it any better. Thanks for such a spot-on review!