2022 or 2002, Who Can Tell?
With 2022 Rom Coms, we seem to have backslid into the early 2000’s.
Love & Gelato (2022) 🥐
Look Both Ways (2022) 🥐🥐
Netflix, WTF.
Why are we tokenizing?
A white, trim lead with a black best friend and a gay character not introduced until 2/3rds of the way through the movie. CHECK!
Neither Queer nor POC in these films have any character development or depth. In Love & Gelato the Black BBF is also a frighteningly bad friend. She makes a fake account for the lead with photoshopped pics and uses it to give a stranger her number. This is portrayed as giving her awkward friend the boost she needs to get out there. Yikes!
In Look Both Ways the Black BFF just randomly starts dating a rude neighbor, who is *gasp* a woman.
These flat characters are a disservice to the lovely actors that play them, holding up shallow friendships as bestie love to admire for the teens and college audience they are clearly targeting by their use of slang, such as, “She really was the GOAT.” (Greatest Of All Time) and, “This cannoli is fire.” (very good).
But wait it gets worse! With the plot!
Choicess
Our heroines, like in many sad Rom-Coms, are tossed around by the whims of men and twists of fate.
Love & Gelato hosts a love triangle with our clumsy and fearful lead (Lina) who has just lost her mother. By the dying wish of her mom, she travels to Italy (leaving the day after the funeral) where she meets a wealthy young man who tells her what to do, gets her in trouble, and is labeled as lost but objectively is a simple narcissist. GTFO Lina! Behind door number two, the rich kid’s slightly less well off foe offers Lina a ride home but instead takes her to a back alley without her consent. He gives her a pastry from said back alley, but in doing so reveals another woman’s secret bakery. Aside from all the big red flags for women viewers, we also have an unfortunate lesson for the men here. When this beau throws away his chance of getting into a top culinary school by giving Lina his grandma’s recipe prize winning gelato to cheer her up instead of giving it to the judges.
In the end, a completely unearned, “I need to find myself” by taking pictures of Italy like my mom did stunt (involving nothing more than a haircut, losing her glasses, and some makeup) is staged to push away both boys for a whole year. In the end, you guessed it, she’s still clumsy (falling twice in the whole movie apparently makes that a personality trait) and she goes with Mr. Gelato. She is thrown about and barely gets the chance to nod ‘yes’ after her ‘no’ is ignored.
Look Both Ways is a pro-choice disaster. When our lead gets pregnant just after college graduation she is told by her one time lover / friend it is her choice. She gives the life altering descision barely a thought and immediately throws away a plan to move to LA to be an animator, and moves back in with her parents. The other version of herself doesn’t get pregnant and goes to LA. Both versions hit rock bottom either with baby blues and boy blues or job blue and boy blues. Both versions of herself (who’s illustration style changes from scene to scene) are confronted with a dilemma that she hasn’t put enough work into her art to be original and successful. She works hard in a montage and then very quickly gets into South By Southwest–both after not having worked for 4 years to raise a baby or by simply taking time off to do her own thing after quitting her going-nowhere internship. Ooooh So if I just worked harder I’d have success. Why didn’t you tell me before, Netflix?!
A Nice Word
The sliver lining of these films is their set design and generally beautifully lit and shot film. Whichever writer (or corporate misogynist looking over the writers’ shoulders) is responsible for the rest of these incredibly backslide-y should be demoted till they join us is 2022.
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