Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Love Again’ on Netflix, a Rom-Com Fueled By The Schmaltzy Power of Celine Dion

Romantic “comedy”/Celine Dion vanity promo reel Love Again recently wedged itself at the top of Netflix’s Top 10, an occurrence that, last time I checked, was a sign of the apocalypse. Now, a baaaaaaad movie finding itself at that dubious-at-best streaming summit is nothing new – it just reignites all the usual questions that pop up under these circumstances, e.g., who’s watching this crap, is it REALLY being watched that much, is Netflix effing with us, will Netflix ever be transparent with its streaming numbers, why god why, etc. Priyanka Chopra Jonas headlines this drippy and insipid movie in which Dion plays a version of herself who’s a kind of love guru, dispensing romantic advice by reciting dialogue that seems inspired, if not derived wholesale, from Celine Dion lyrics. It also insists that we’re in the midst of a “Celineaissance” when A) we’re not, and B) “Dionaissance” is obviously the more mellifluous term, and C) this movie would be a rather audacious component of said pop-cultural movement, if it actually existed.

LOVE AGAIN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: We can tell Mira (Chopra Jonas) and John (Arinze Kene) love each other, because they say it about 1,000 times a minute. Each. She sits in a cafe, sketching ideas for her children’s books, when he drops by to surprise her with some tropical Skittles, which are her favorite. He loves her and she loves him and they love each other and they kiss and giggle and he has to go and she watches as she walks out and the camera holds on her face as we hear eeeerrrtttttt-screeech-CRASH and he dies. Are we supposed to be laughing at this? No. But we are anyway. Nothing like opening the movie with massive tonal discordance! Title card: TWO YEARS LATER. Mira ain’t over it. She mopes around her parents’ house and flumps around in her big thick socks and shit, drawing sad, weepy caterpillars for her award-winning series of books about caterpillars. Her publisher is unamused. Sad caterpillars don’t sell. I think all this is a metaphor: Mira is a sad caterpillar, but in human form. It’s clear that John would’ve made her transform into a luscious butterfly, but he’s dead, and now she’s content to stay curled up forever in her chrysalis. See, like I says, METAPHORS!!!

Elsewhere. Rob (Outlander hunk Sam Heughan) is late for work. Overslept on the couch in a depressive funk. Again? Yeah, probably again. He finally gets to work – a newspaper where he’s the music critic. His editor hauls him in the office and says Rob ain’t getting that podcast he wants to do and instead he has to write a profile of Celine Dion for her new tour. As a former music critic for a newspaper, I can say this should take Rob about five, maybe six hours to complete, because he’d also have several dozen other assignments to get to, but this being a phony-ass movie, it’ll take him the rest of the movie, which plays out over, I believe, several weeks (it’s a bit fudgy). Why? Because this is how phony-ass movies work. Anyway. Rob is a sadboy because his fiance got cold feet and now he’s left to suffer alone with his grossly underdeveloped character. I mean, we know nothing about the guy other than he works at a newspaper with a couple of “colorful” coworker supporting characters. And he likes basketball, which we know because there’s a scene of him sitting on his couch watching basketball with a basketball on his lap, which is how nobody watches basketball, unless you’re watching basketball while you’re in a phony-ass movie.

Back to Mira. She has an uptempo sister, Suzy (Sofia Barclay), who exists to shake her out of this funk and get her to move back to The City and force her to use a dating app against her will. Mira resists, and settles on therapeutically sending her dead BF crushingly depressing texts. Meanwhile, Rob gets assigned a new phone at work and Kismet proclaims that it needs to be the dead boyfriend’s old number. Why Kismet instead of Mere Coincidence? Because Mere Coincidence has nothing to do with a purple-lightning storm over New York City that seems to inspire the eventual meeting of star-crossed lovers. Inexplicably, I might add. The story would function just fine without the purple lightning, but there it is anyway, and all we can do is shake our heads, roll our eyes and deal with it.

From here, you can piece the rest of this movie together: Will Rob read all the sad texts and fall in love with Mira simply due to the power of her words? Mmmmaybe. Will Mira go on a godawful date with a douche played by Chopra Jonas’ real-life hubs, Nick Jonas, because LOLs? Mmmmaybe. Will Rob lightly stalk Mira and force a meeting so they can fall in love and he canl never explain that he has her old boyfriend’s number, simply so the plot has a reason for a break-up-and-make-up third-act conflict? Mmmmaybe. And will Rob sit down to interview Celine Dion no less than three times, and end up getting sage romantic advice from the Queen of the Power Ballad herself, playing herself? Of course, because I think that’s why the movie exists in the first place.

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Love Again isn’t quite a massive ego/vanity project like Cool as Ice or Glitter, but it’s definitely in the same ballpark.

Performance Worth Watching: I’m not sure any of this is truly “worth” watching, but it is kind of funny to see Chopra Jonas and Heughan attempt to kindle romance from a sopping-wet pile of rotten dialogue. 

Memorable Dialogue: Celine Dion Herself chastises Rob for being a schlub and points out that she is, indeed, Celine Dion Herself: “You have the presence of a pair of used underwear! Sit up straight! C’mon, you’re with Celine Dion!”

Sex and Skin: Nah. Just a post-coital snuggle.

Our Take: It’s one thing for a movie to entertain all the cliches of rom-coms, but it’s entirely another thing to do so with fists of ham, feet of lead, and brains of cottage cheese. Love Again does not play like the syrupy schmaltz of an oversung Celine Dion rager, the likes of which form a coagulatory bolus that lodges in the colon and takes weeks to fully digest; no, the film is more like raw fiber that goes down like donkey straw and rockets through you, leaving you bewildered, exhausted and a little bit sore. 

I know. I’m being mean. But to watch this movie is to experience molecular-level embarrassment for all involved parties. It’s a movie about death, grief, heartbreak, modern technology, the perils of stalking and the thorny process of healing. It’s also about CELINE F—ING DION, and don’t you forget it. For a movie that surely intends to poignantly explore the mysteriously magical mysteries of love, it left me with one piece of rock-solid life advice: If ever your heart aches, you should give Celine Dion a call. Or, if you don’t have her number, and she has a new album out (does she have a new album out?), you should go buy it.

OK, she doesn’t have a new album out. But she recorded five new songs for this film, which showcases them whenever we’re supposed to have an emotional response to the characters’ predicaments, as if Celine Dion Her F—ing Self was gently taking your hand and whispering in your ear what you need to be feeling. Now, this is the point in the review where the critic expresses their exasperation by addressing the reader directly: Reader, I resisted feeling those feelings. It wasn’t difficult, because this movie’s characters are empty souls stuck in a hopelessly contrived, zero-credibility when’s-the-other-shoe-gonna-drop/sitting-on-an-atomic-bomb-waiting-for-it-to-go-off rom-com plot that briefly stirs some romantic juices two but has the comedy acumen of a dead-eyed hammerhead shark stalking a halibut. My heart does not go on for this movie; yours probably won’t either.

Our Call: Shoulda called it Facepalm: The Movie. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.