Name: Choose Love
Director: Stuart McDonald
Released: 2023-08-31T12:30:00

Choose Love is an interactive romantic comedy following Cami Conway as she has to choose between three different suitors and make some important life decisions. The film is streaming on Netflix.

Story

Cami Conway has got a steady job and relationship but she feels like she is still missing something so she goes to a psychic to get some clarity. The psychic tells her that she will be faced with some significant choices in the future that could be hugely impactful.

She learns that she might finally be able to fulfill her lifelong dream of being a singer, but she will also face uncertainty in her love life as two more suitors enter her life.

Cami has to choose between her loving boyfriend, Paul, the one who got away, Jack, and international singing superstar Rex Galier.

Performances

Laura Marano is quite bubbly and charming in this film, giving off “Alison Brie” vibes. That can be interpreted in multiple ways but it must not take away from the credit she deserves for her performance.

Scott Michael Foster plays Paul, who is the most basic choice out of the three. There isn’t much to his personality apart from being a nice guy but Foster does well regardless.

Avan Jogia plays a caricature more than anything else. Rex’s personality can be classified as “charming and British”, which is an indictment on the writers but Jogia doesn’t help the cause either.

Jordi Webber plays Jack, who is yet another uninspiring choice for Cami. Webber does his best but he’s just a slightly different flavor of Paul and that’s not much to brag about.

Positives

Cami is a wonderful character and in isolation, her scenes with each of the three suitors are entertaining and have promise. She has brilliant chemistry with all of her co-stars.

The one ending where she chooses herself is thankfully included and is a nice one. It gives Cami’s character some agency and doesn’t limit her life to her romantic pursuits.

Negatives

Apart from certain dialogue changes, many of the choices aren’t too critical. Almost all of the endings do feel abrupt and need just a little bit more tacked on the end to make them more weighty.

There are discrepancies with the choices, as picking Jack in Las Vegas doesn’t acknowledge if you skipped his gallery event earlier or not. Her job doesn’t get enough attention either and whether she quits or gets a raise isn’t considered too consequential.

Paul’s story tree suffers the most and remains the least interesting of the three choices, no matter how you end up with him, it barely feels earned as his relationship with Cami was built off-screen rather than in the film.

The fourth wall breaks are overused and having Cami list out the choices and ask the audience directly ruins the novelty of the premise. Making her unaware, or maybe just slightly aware would have added a layer of intrigue to the story.

Verdict

Choose Love is a pretty basic rom-com that doesn’t benefit too much from the interactive feature. Ultimately, it is the genre that isn’t a good fit as the audience is left with commonplace endings with only the man at the end changing. The effort to weave in all the branches of the tree seamlessly isn’t there either, proving once again that choosing your adventure is wasted on a rom-com.