It's a remake of a 2016 German film, based on a novel by Sofie Cramer called SMS für Dich (2009). The story focuses on a woman who sends text messages on her cell phone or mobile to the phone number of her late boyfriend. Two years after her boyfriend's death, his number has been reassigned to someone else. That new person reads the messages and doesn't tell her he's doing so. That new guy decides to use those texts to start a relationship with her. He commits a lie of omission and a subtle form of manipulation. It's a story that's about the woman overcoming her grief and taking steps to move on. It's also about the new guy also moving on from a sudden breakup.
So many Hollywood romantic comedies have this kind of lie, omission or manipulation. It usually revolves around a gimmick that often can be handled right away, but dragging out the lie, omission or manipulation is how most plots are built with the climax being the revelation of the so-called lie. The lie in this film isn't perhaps as egregious as other Hollywood rom-coms, but what's eye-rolling is how seemingly a perfect match the protagonists are, given their random connection.
Priyanka Chopra Jonas (Isn't It Romantic and Baywatch) stars as Mira Ray, an illustrator and author living in New York. She has a successful series of books about a character called Bhoomi the Stubborn Caterpillar, which she draws herself. She's dating a man named John Wright whom she dearly loves. She learns that he was planning to propose marriage, but she learns it after a drunk driver accidentally kills him. She spends two years grieving and now her sister, Suzy, played by Sofia Barclay, wants her to get back into the dating world.
Writer-director James C. Strouse made a film 15 years ago called Grace Is Gone (2007), which is about a man who loses his wife after she's killed in combat. The man leaves audio messages to his wife on his answering machine, which has his wife's recorded voice. The reason Strouse was likely attracted to this material is because Mira basically does the same thing. Instead of leaving audio to her deceased loved one, she leaves text messages. Grace Is Gone centers on handling grief in the immediate aftermath and mustering the ability to talk about it. This one is more about the next step, that of moving on or picking up the pieces.
Sam Heughan (Outlander and The Spy Who Dumped Me) co-stars as Rob Burns, a journalist at a newspaper called New York Chronicle. He mainly works as a music critic or who covers the music industry. He wants to do a podcast for the paper, but first he's assigned to do an article on Celine Dion who has a new album and is launching a new tour in New York. He's reluctant because he's not a fan of Dion's music. Plus, his fiancé recently dumped him days before their wedding, so he's somewhat depressed.
He's given a work phone and its number happens to be the number to Mira's dead boyfriend. Because of his low mental state, when he starts getting Mira's poetic and lengthy texts, he doesn't block the number or return the texts and tell her about the number being his now. He's curious to know who is sending these texts. Instead of contacting the person directly, he basically sneaks around and stalks her, using information in her texts to find her and contrive a meeting.
Rob contrives the meeting because he realizes after sneaking and stalking her that she's a beautiful woman. If she wasn't so physically attractive, would he have gone through all the trouble? It was somewhat established that if the person sending the texts were a man, then that would've stopped Rob in his tracks. Strouse floats the idea that Rob isn't so superficial and there's a line in the film where Rob claims to have fallen in love with Mira's words or her texts. Yet, that's a cheap way to push back on his shallowness. He fell for her because she's gorgeous and female, which is fine, but the film doesn't push back or challenge him on that point. Mira or her sister should have done so, but they don't.
There's quite a few, cute, romantic moments where we see Mira and Rob having a lot of unlikely things in common. The real wrinkle though is Mira not being able to let go of the memory of her late boyfriend named John Wright, played by Arinzé Kene, or move on from him. Unfortunately, the film doesn't give us much about her relationship with John. We don't know what John did for work, how he met Mira and why they bonded, so it's difficult for us to feel what Mira is feeling or understand it. The filmmakers could've provided flashbacks to Mira and John's romance, but they don't.
On a side note, I first noticed Arinzé Kene who plays Mira's late boyfriend a few years ago in the play adaptation, The Pass (2016). Kene co-starred with Russell Tovey in that film. Tovey also has a supporting role here as Billy, the best friend and co-worker of Rob. In The Pass, Tovey and Kene played same-sex lovers. Tovey was a closeted footballer in that film. Here, Billy is openly gay and it's nice to see him express that somewhat in a major mainstream motion picture.
If one likes Celine Dion's music, then this film will give you a lot of her hits. If you're a fan of her personal life, this film also gives a lot about her real-life relationship with her late husband, René. What we learn could be true or fictionalized, but Dion as an actress delivers the stuff about her personal life very well.
Rated PG-13 for some sexual material and some language.
Running Time: 1 hr. and 44 mins.
In theaters.
