Love Again

It’s been two years since Mira Ray (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) lost her boyfriend in a tragic accident. She’s been unable to move on, and only the persistent pestering of her sister Suzy (Sofia Barclay) has gotten her out of her parents’ house and back into her New York apartment. At Suzy’s insistence, Mira consents to one date off an Internet website, but finding the process horrifying, she picks up her phone and texts her boyfriend’s old number instead… sending messages into what she thinks is the unknown.

Except… now, the number belongs to Rob Burns (Sam Heughan), a Scottish transport working as a music journalist. The first text hits him during a power outage and startles him. He finds it strange, but ignores it. Then the texts start coming more frequently, giving him glimpses into a total stranger’s day. Fearing to answer them would be embarrassing for the other person, he becomes fascinated by this woman’s pain instead, and more than a little drawn to her soulfulness.

When she mentions where she’ll be having a date, against the advice of his friends, Rob goes there—and spots Mira at once. He just knows this is the woman texting her dead boyfriend… and he wants to get to know her. But can a relationship that started with “dead texting” really work out?

In the meantime, Rob is struggling to believe in love after a breakup of his own, and has confided the story to Celine Dion, whom his boss asked him to interview for the magazine. It’s a cute cameo for her, even if she is more singer than actress, and a lot of her songs make up the soundtrack.

Overall, this is a sweet movie with a few poignant flaws. But you have to suspend disbelief to swallow any of it. Yes, Mira is caught up in her pain, but would a modern girl really think her messages weren’t being seen by anyone else if they weren’t coming back to her as “this number has been disconnected”? (Everyone gets texts from strangers hoping to reconnect with someone they’ve lost, so we all know numbers get recycled after a few months.) And when they do fall in love, it happens within 72 hours. By the third date, Rob and Mira are sleeping together. Even if you believe people can fall in love at first sight, that’s fast.

Priyanka and Sam have cute chemistry together, and it’s fun to see him in a romantic comedy, but there’s nothing really memorable about this film other than its unique premise. It is a forgettable way to spend a couple of hours, even though it does respectfully deal with the grief of loss and show how hard it is for someone to move on after a devastating tragedy. It’s also predictable in that you know exactly what will come between them and need to be overcome before they can have their happily ever after.

Occasional bad language peppers the script, including one f-word and casual uses of sh*t. God’s name is taken in vain a few times. There’s also casual references to sex (Suzy calls it “getting the D”), and when Mira’s date finds out she isn’t interested in a one night stand, he texts someone else (“you don’t want sex, and I have to burn off all those meal calories”). She and Rob are shown “morning after” cuddled up in bed, the sheets covering anything private. We find out through her text messages that she and her finance were living together before marriage, and she sends him a couple of spicy texts (wanting to see him naked, missing him on the pillow beside her).

There’s a fair amount of social drinking as well, and one of Rob’s coworkers is Gay and gets hit on at a bar, before mentioning that he and this guy he just met are going to get “smashed” later together.

I enjoyed how the film dealt with grief by inviting Celine to tell the real details of her romance with her husband, and her experience with the pain of his passing. That felt more meaningful in many ways than most of the scripted lines. But it also felt a little awkward, as if her presence was a gimmick trying to make the story more believable. The writers did well in blending her into the story and making her important to it. I just wish the two main characters hadn’t fallen into bed with one another so fast.

• Vulgar/Crude language: Moderate
• Profane language: Moderate
• Drugs/Alcohol: Mild
• Sex: Minor
• Nudity: Minor
• Wokeism: Minor
• Violence: None
• Occult: None

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