Love at First Sight review

Love at First Sight — not to be confused with Married at First Sight or Love is Blind — is a sweet rom com that leans into the most comforting, familiar aspects of the genre while bringing enough originality to make for a must see for romance fans.

It avoids that sense of you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all approach most modern rom com films fall into thanks to some savvy twist to disrupt expectations in a good way. And having two leads with believable chemistry certainly doesn’t hurt either.

Jameela Jamil (She-Hulk: Attorney at Law) plays the omnipresent narrator in a cute gimmick way. Her character is never far from the action and helps steer the potential couple together despite the occasional awkward moment. A fun running joke is the random appearances she makes to the point the would-be lovebirds start thinking they’ve seen her before.

Hadley (Haley Lu Richardson, Split) and Oliver (Ben Hardy, Bohemian Rhapsody) meet at an airport charging station. She’s habitually late and missed the flight to her father’s (Rob Delaney, Wrath of Man) second wedding in London. Thankfully, Hadley isn’t being a brat about it and genuinely wants to show support. Yet in a refreshingly mature fashion, she is trying to cope with the final nail in the coffin of her original family unit.

Oliver is big on statistics, quoting the odds of events happening with alarming frequency. He hates surprises and is a bit of a germaphobe. He’s returning home for a less traditional family gathering that’s best left unspoiled.

Hadley and Oliver’s meet cute actually feels like something that could happen in the non-rom-com world. Over the course of the long flight, the two bond with some innocent yet intentional flirting playing out. Maybe love at first sight isn’t as rare as one might think?

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Love at First Sight could have played the safe route with this kind of rom-com. Hadley and Oliver could have been each other’s dates for their respective events, fallen madly in love and that would have been fine.

Richardson and Hardy make the quick pace of the courtship feel authentic as if both Hadley and Oliver realize they’re on the verge of something special the longer they spend time together.

Screenwriter Katie Lovejoy (To All the Boys: Always and Forever), adapting Jennifer E. Smith’s 2013 novel, The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight, goes for a different approach — one that’s far less predictable and a lot more satisfying.

Hadley and Oliver tend to their respective celebrations with a few twists thrown in to help bring them back together. Director Vanessa Caswill smoothly shifts from one event to the next while providing some casual encouragement to tourists considering a trip across the pond with some beautiful imagery of some of the UK’s majestic sights.

Love at First Sight’s supporting cast is sweet and likable. Delaney is always a welcome presence and Katrina Nare (Andor) is incredibly pleasant as Hadley’s new stepmother. Tom Taylor, Dexter Fletcher and Sally Phillips are wonderfully eccentric and charming as Oliver’s family.

Caswill and Lovejoy understand that the film doesn’t need a snippy or mean-spirited antagonist in a feel-great rom com. The thrill is all in the unexpectedly deep connection and then the chase to make it last.

With a pairing as engaging as Richardson and Hardy, there’s no need for any nasty messiness. Their chemistry is more than enough to keep viewers invested and rooting for Oliver and Hadley without any forced drama.

Love at First Sight is a very enjoyable and fresh rom-com that finds its own path in the genre. Fans of true love, improbability and believing in the impossible likely won’t just like this but find plenty to love with this film.

Rating: 9.5 out of 10

Photo Credit: Netflix