In an attempt to stay relevant between filming the next installments of their individual franchises, Lilly Collins (The Mortal Instruments) and Claflin (The Hunger Games) remind us all why most people despise romantic comedies. If American rom-coms have cooled or backed off for the meantime, the UK didn’t get the memo. Love, Rosie (although I am sure you won’t) is the same movie of a boy and a girl desperate to be together, but unable to communicate their love. It’s Notting Hill, it’s My Best Friends Wedding, pick one, pick them all. It follows the course of 12 years, hitting the very bullet points of life (marriage, death, college) that director Richard Linklater specifically said he stayed away from in his 12 year project Boyhood.
Best friends since age five, Rose Dunne (Collins) and Alex Stewart (Claflin) have flirted all through high school, never being able to express their feelings for each other. One of them was always dating someone else when one got the courage to speak up. In an attempt to get back at Alex for taking someone else to the prom, Rose jumps into bed with Greg the jock (Christian Cooke) who impregnates her changing all the future plans. Alex from small town England moves to Boston pursuing medicine and over the next decade they continue to have the worst timing with their feelings.
The script once again reinforces the notion that women are only happy and content with a man to take care of them.
Love, Rosie lacks a real moral conscious about everything young girls should be concerned with. Instead of using Rosie’s predicament as a life lesson, her family is so accepting of her being 18 and pregnant, waving goodbye to college and career dreams. The only thing Rosie seems to understand is that Alex got away. Sex is portrayed repeatedly as a game by both Rosie and Alex. Don’t expect the audience to muster up much sympathy for Rosie as she the cleans the hotel floor. The book it’s based on spans a much longer time period, but is shortened to 12 years so we don’t have see different actors playing the same parts.
“I just want to belong to someone,” Rosie says when she and Greg re-unite years later after a missed opportunity with Alex. The script once again reinforces the notion that women are only happy and content with a man to take care of them. The entire film we watch Rosie (and Alex too) search for a companion as if nothing else in life matters. The bubble gum script of drama and tragedy is almost enough to make you sick. You see every plot point coming thanks to the musical score that cues you in on when to cry or laugh, although I did neither. Love, Rosie is not a realistic portrayal of best friends of the opposite gender. It’s not even a good portrayal of honest human interaction for that matter, as it caters to the world of fantasy and melodrama.
Final Thought
There is nothing to love here, only distain for the desperate portrayal of women.