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Image: Netflix
The new romantic drama starring Gabrielle Union, the perfect findnow it’s streaming, but should i give it a watch?
I’ve mentioned this several times in previous reviews of this genre, but Netflix is in a rom-com DROUGHT. Although they’re one of the few places to find these kinds of movies after studios stopped releasing them almost exclusively in theaters, Netflix has stopped producing the quality rom-coms they had five years ago. The kissing booth. Set it up. To all the boys I’ve loved before. The perfect date, someone cool& you will always be my maybe. This was the peak time for rom-coms on Netflix.
Now, in 2023, the struggles continue. your place or mine with Ashton Kutcher and Reese Witherspoon and A tour guide to love starring Rachael Leigh Cook failed to grab the attention of critics and Netflix viewers, even with star power bringing attention to its head.
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This weekend, fans of the genre will be betting once again on Netflix’s latest original rom-com hoping to do better in the form of The Perfect Find, starring Gabrielle Union (Go ahead, bad boys II), Keith Powers (tomorrow’s war, straight outta compton) and Gina Torres (Suits, Firefly).
Based on Tia Williams’ book of the same name, the film centers on former fashion star Jenna Jones (Union) who returns to New York City after a year’s absence due to a messy breakup. public and a high-profile dismissal. Knowing that she will only have one chance to rebuild her reputation, Jenna swallows her pride and goes to work for ruthless tycoon Darcy (Torres). But her comeback attempt is complicated when she falls for her charming and much younger co-worker Eric (Powers), who turns out to be Darcy’s son. After risking everything for her career, Jenna must decide if she’ll risk everything on a secret romance and figure out if she can have a future with Eric despite her generational divide.
Directed by Numa Perrier (jezebel) from a script by Leigh Davenport (run the world), The Perfect Find has some of the traditional tropes of the genre (stressful, important job in a big city, bad breakup, complicated romance in the making), but you don’t always feel like a member of the club. Its tone borders on the melodramatic at times and involves a very strange place that seems almost taken from a soap opera twist. It’s not a motion picture or Lifetime TV movie, but something in between that almost changes the quality from one scene to the next.
Image: Netflix
Analyzing its protagonist Jenna Jones and her launch into the story is a most frustrating and confusing exercise. We as the audience get little snippets of Jenna’s earlier life in the media clippings of the opening title sequence, but we never really find out the details of her successful career, her messy breakup, and her high profile. dismissal of her. Jenna will mention that she was turned into a meme or dragged by people on the internet, but she will never say why. Her ex-boyfriend is made to be a jerk, but we don’t know what she did to her. She’ll say things like he “cheated” on her for 10 years or she “wanted more,” but that’s not complicated; that’s just life. As for her career before her fall, people will go out and say “you are you, right?” or something vague that implies her high status, but no one says anything specific about her work that gives insight into why she was so successful. Hell, in a larger sense, she didn’t even want to be trendy. Somehow, she and Eric relate to early 20th century cinema because she wanted to be a film historian when she was younger.
But the biggest crime of the movie and the character of Jenna Jones is the absence of a reason to encourage her return in the first place. If we don’t know the details of what happened to her and just follow her through a 90-minute exercise in self-sabotage, what’s the point of following her journey? She is abrasive. She is bitter. She is holding. The question isn’t why she can’t bounce back and recapture her former glory; that’s why Eric would stick around until the end of the story to find out.
In general, the perfect find is a bewildering story of disidentified characters standing in the way of their own paths in life and love with very little reason to support them in their struggles. The humor (crying over a dead peacock, doing a dance line to “Soul Train” with The Jets’ “You Got It All,” jokes about being lactose intolerant) is chilling and out of step with the rest of the movie. Solid performances by Gina Torres and Keith Powers get lost in the tangle of an unworthy story script.
Look the perfect find on netflix if you like
- Deliver us from Eve
- Two can play that game
- i love jones
Netflix MVP the perfect find
THE SOUNDTRACK
While the movie may not be what you want, you can’t blame the soundtrack. Featuring everything from jazz legends (Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald) to R&B classics (SWV’s “Weak,” Usher’s “Good Kisser,” Silk Sonic’s “Leave the Door Open”), songs from the movie provided a better backdrop and tone than the script. They even throw in a Mariah Carey Christmas song for good measure.
PLAY, PAUSE OR STOP?
ARREST.
The only perfect thing the perfect find is the soundtrack with Powers & Torres in second place. However, there is little to root for Jenna Jones, her story, or the creators’ jerky and muddled execution. Netflix needs a really bad, fast, good rom-com.
