Love Again Review

Love Again is a remake of the German film SMS für Dich. The American version moves the story to New York City and sees a popular recording artist getting a prominent supporting role.

Mira Ray (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) is a children’s book writer and artist who saw the love of her life die in a car accident. After two years away she moves back to New York but is still grieving for John (Arinzé Kene), Mira texts his old phone number. The recipient of her messages is Rob Burns (Sam Heughan), a British music journalist living in New York, and he becomes fascinated by the messages and the person who sent them.

Love Again was an unusual film. It had a modern-day setup for a love story ignited by a tragedy that showed two people desperate to find each other. It had the potential to be a Sleepless in Seattle-type film, or at least be like You Got Mail. Those were romantic stories where two people communicate with each other through alternative means before meeting up. Unfortunately, Love Again had a creepy factor to it.

Rob was reading someone’s private messages and didn’t send a message back saying John’s number had been reassigned to him. Even worse, Rob used the information Mira texts to find her. Rob goes to a bar where Mira has a date and because Mira referenced an opera, Rob goes to the opera in the hope of finding her. It was stalkerish. The ticking bomb of the story was Mira finding out about what Rob did, leading to the inevitable ‘liar revealed’ scene.

One of the selling points of the film was Celine Dion. The trailers highlighted that Dion was playing herself and she acted as an executive producer on the film. Rob was meant to interview Dion for his newspaper. However, she acted as a wise advisor to Rob in his quest for love. Dion told Rob that he couldn’t interview her until he understood her music. It was a self-indulgent role for Dion as the film made her out to be important from a personal and cultural standpoint.

Dion’s message of the importance of her music led to another issue with Love Again: its need to seem profound. Rob was shown to be a basketball fan and he said that you can tell what sort of person someone is by seeing how they play the sport. There were also attempts at trying to make the film inspiring, showing that Mira and Rob can find love after everything they have been through. But all this ended up making Love Again a sappy experience. At best it was the cinematic equivalent of inspirational Instagram posts.

Love Again notably had a lot of British actors in the cast. There were recognisable actors, like having a mini-Years and Years reunion with Russell Tovey and Lydia West as Rob’s work colleagues. The comedian Omid Djalili owned Mira’s favourite burger joint. Celia Imrie had a notable small role as Mira’s publisher. The only American in this American set film was Nick Jonas and that was probably because he’s married Priyanka Chopra Jonas, so the filmmakers could have an in joke.

When watching the film, I was thinking was it filmed in Britain, and yeah, it was mostly filmed in London. So, this led to another question, why didn’t they just set the film in London? It would have made more sense than having some actors pull off atrocious American accents: I’m looking at you Tovey. Or if the American setting was more important, why not film in a North American city and hire some local actors for the supporting roles? Rob seemed like he was initially written to be an American since he was a big basketball fan. It would be unusual for a Brit to be that big an NBA fan.

The cast themselves were a mixed affair. Chopra Jonas was a strong lead as the sad sack who slowly learned to be happy again. Her American accent was solid, and her natural Indian accent only slipped through once. Sofia Barclay and Lydia West were also notable. Both were young actors and they played young energic characters who brought a bit of life to the film. Barclay was a promising performer as Mira’s younger sister. She was trying to get Mira out of her flunk and being a bright spark. Hopefully, there’s more to come from her.

Love Again could have been a simple romantic film that offered an alternative to the cinematic array of action and franchise films. But it was by undermined by the actions of its male lead and had unnecessary pretensions.