Rachael Leigh Cook and Damon Wayans Jr are a definite charming few in a ridiculous but mostly entertaining comedy that is romantic

Rachael Leigh Cook and Damon Wayans Jr celebrity in appreciate Guaranteed, a movie that simply about fits the brief. Photograph: Netflix

A glance that is cursory Netflix’s daily top ten informs us a lot of revealing things, chief among them that quality, or absence thereof, doesn’t have bearing on viewership, but additionally, further down the list can be an underlined reminder that nostalgia nevertheless rules. It is not only any nostalgia however a kind that is specific transports thirtysomething millennials back once again to their teenage years, as evidenced by the current success of Clueless or Jurassic Park or Moesha or Friends, quick access to movies and shows a lot of us needed to struggle for back into the time.

It’s filtered right through to their initial content strategy too, whether it is rebooting The Babysitters Club, casting Jennifer Aniston in Murder Mystery or Sandra Bullock in Bird Box or Christina Milian in Falling Inn appreciate, the latter now leading to a different fallen star headlining her very own low-budget rom-com through the exact same writing duo of Hilary Galanoy and Elizabeth Hackett. This time it’s She’s All That’s “ugly” duckling Rachael Leigh Cook, whose celebrity dimmed instead fast after her Sixpence None the breakout that is richer-soundtracked a sequence of commercial disappointments (RIP Josie plus the Pussycats). But Cook is really a face that will nevertheless show immediately recognisable up to a generation whom feigned shock whenever she became popular her eyeglasses for Freddie Prinze Jr and ended up being like, actually demonstrably nevertheless appealing, and also have wondered where she’s been from the time.

She stars as moralistic but lawyer that is hard-up who assumes on situations she thinks in but struggles in order to make ends fulfill, driving a (stylishly) scrappy old vehicle by having a Tiffany album stuck in the cassette player. But one morning her luck shifts whenever handsome complete complete stranger Nick (Damon Wayans Jr) asks her to accept a unique appropriate battle. He’s been utilizing dating app Love Guaranteed now for some time and he wants Susan to fight their claim that members will find love by date 1,000 as he reaches date 986. And you may probably imagine where this might be going.

This is a slightly above average Lifetime-level piece of fluff that also employs a director, who like his leading lady, has seen better career days like Galanoy and Hackett’s New Zealand-set renovation rom-com Falling Inn Love. For the reason that movie it had been Cruel Intentions’ Roger Kumble slumming it and also this time, it is Daredevil’s Mark Steven Johnson would you a somewhat better work at making their Netflix paycheque project feel it might be seen in the screen that is big. It’s a slick and confection that is glossy contains a small number of handsome shots that elevates it simply over the suprisingly low club Netflix has set for it self (an outside pan back again to comparison Cook’s character alone with wine across the street to her sister’s happy household is unusually impressive). It’s additionally passably entertaining, a silly and forgettable but mostly charming diversion that should see other ’90s has-beens clamouring because of their very own celebrity cars.

There’s an attempt that is half-hearted to skewer or at last gently poke at dating app culture plus it’s a ripe area uneasily filled up with businesses luring singletons in because of the vow of love yet eventually maybe maybe maybe maybe perhaps not wanting them to fit up and simply simply simply just take their company away. But like a great many other movies or demonstrates that delve into comparable territory, Galanoy and Hackett count on the weary label of digital courtship dominated by one-note one-joke whackjobs, basing the thought of all of it for a married person’s worst fear of exactly what a Tinder date would really end up like. Better writers, such as for instance Issa Rae and Aziz Ansari, also have fallen foul for this and thus it will be naive to anticipate far better here nonetheless it continues to be a tiring, simplistic distillation of an even more complex globe and in appreciate Guaranteed, the bad dates get boring real fast.

Cook is a casino game lead though, enthusiastically tossing by by by by herself to the formula she faces, and there’s a chemistry that is natural Wayans Jr, a charismatic star who must certanly be cropping up in far larger tasks than this. It is weirdly the 2nd Netflix summer time comedy to haul down Heather Graham due to the fact outsized comic cameo, weird because she’s perhaps perhaps perhaps not a star who’s particularly adept at comedy and somehow her presence listed here is a lot more embarrassing than it had been in Desperados, quite the feat.

There won’t be many watchers who’ll keep in mind it by this time around how to see who likes you on transgender date without paying month that is next within its quick running time, it simply about fits the brief, zipping along at rate buoyed because of the charm of the leads, like very nearly fully guaranteed alternatively.

Like Guaranteed is present now on Netflix