When We First Met (2018)

Noah (Adam Devine) falls in love with Avery (Alexandra Daddario), but  has to resign himself to the fact that although they had a great first date together, it ended with a hug and nothing else happened between them. She then met, and fell in love with, the perfect Ethan (Robbie Amell). It's been three years since that fateful time, and Avery and Ethan are getting engaged, which leads Noah to get horribly drunk and then encounter a magical photobooth that he once used with Avery, which takes him back to his first time meeting her. Can he change the outcome, and will he like what happens?

Having seen many people mention that this is a romcom riff on Groundhog Day, I can tell you that it's not. Not really. It's a romcom riff on The Butterfly Effect. There's a difference between the two. And that difference is big when it comes to how the film plays out, because When We First Met could have been a lot better than it is, and a lot funnier, if it was hewing closer to the former than the latter.

The cast don't help. As much as I like Devine, I don't think of him as the best choice for a rom-com lead, although he doesn't do too bad here. Daddario is also fine, but she's the sort of actress I can always imagine being bumped for any number of better actresses. Amell does well with his fairly limited role, and Shelley Hennig is decent enough as Carrie, Avery's roommate. It's just a shame that her character is twisted to put together a third act that doesn't feel in line with the rest of the film. Andrew Bachelor fairs a bit better, playing Noah's best friend, Max.

The script by John Whittington doesn't have much going for it beyond the potential fun of the central premise, which is squandered at almost every opportunity. This could have crammed in so many fun failures as Noah tried to change his life. We instead just get a few specific scenarios as Noah is rushed to his big life lesson. Director Ari Sandel doesn't do anything to improve upon the script, relying on the talents of his leads, which again makes it easier to reach the conclusion that there were probably better options than Devine and Daddario to put in the lead roles.

Despite the problems, When We First Met isn't actually a bad film. It's just an average film. There aren't enough laughs, you don't REALLY care that much about the characters, the time travel is fun but not used as well as it should be, and it's passable entertainment when it could have been something much more enjoyable.

5/10

As this is another Netflix film, you can avoid a link of me pimping out sales links here.

Bonus Review: Ouija (2014)

Thank goodness for movies like Ouija, because sometimes I want to rattle off a review with little thought and/or effort. This kind of film, that seems to have taken no thought or effort to make, encourages me to do that. Putting too much energy into this review would be ridiculous, considering the laziness shown onscreen.

After a prologue that sets up the rules of playing with a Ouija board, the film moves forward to the here and now. Debbie (Shelley Hennig) is looking quite nervy. It seems to be due to the Ouija board that she throws in the fire. It's not long until the board reappears, leading to a death that upsets the rest of the cast, all of them completely interchangeable rent-a-teens. Everyone decides to do the sensible thing, of course. Yes, they all use the Ouija board to contact the spirit of their recently-deceased friend, but they end up instead allowing an evil force to have some chatty time with them. And then more deaths start to occur.

Stiles White and Juliet Snowden did a good job recently with their script for The Possession. It was slick horror for the masses, but it was nicely put together. Unfortunately, they also wrote the screenplay for Boogeyman, which this is more in line with. Boogeyman is, in fact, the slightly better film. The weak screenplay is hampered further by the unimaginative direction from White, trying out the big chair for the first time. Jump scares are predictable and unearned, shots of anyone around the Ouija board are as dull as ditchwater, and the one decent scene in the whole film feels as if it's ripping off Final Destination.

Although I'm pretty dismissive of the entire cast - Olivia Cooke, Ana Coto, Daren Kagasoff, Bianca A. Santos, and a few others - I'm not blaming them for the dull mess that unfolds during the 80+ minutes. They are, after all, just doing their job. Okay, they don't do very well, but they don't exactly have the best material to work with. And when Lin Shaye appears, the whole thing starts to feel like one big joke at the expense of audiences who have bought enough tickets over the years to show that horror films can often provide a decent return on very little investment. Not that Shaye does anything wrong. She just happens to have appeared in some of the better horror movies in the past couple of years, and is now placed slap bang in the middle of one of the worst.

The only thing that Ouija is good for is allowing itself to be held up as an example of all the worst traits of mainstream horror movies from America. No intelligence in the script whatsoever, no originality, no charm or charisma found in any of the leads, and no reason to care about what happens to any of the characters. All you end up with are some jumps and half-decent CGI.

Perhaps it was a deliberate move to make this film so dull. Perhaps the original tagline was - "Ouija - you'll be board to death". Sadly, I doubt the film-makers would even be that imaginative.

3/10

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