I’m not completely happy with Brin Hill’s Fantastika Romance based on a script by Joss Whedon, perhaps because I expect a bit more than this film’s finale based on artificial outside threats that really doesn’t fit the calm tone of the rest of the narrative very well.
There’s also the sad presence of one of these generic indie rock soundtracks too many indie romances suffer from, you know the kind, where every song is just as characterless as any given piece of truly bad charts pop. Which would be less of a problem if the film didn’t push the music on its audience quite as hard as this one does at times.
On the positive side, and despite the music, the film’s first two thirds are often quite lovely, with many a scene that’s clever and emotionally honest, and fine acting by Zoe Kazan and Michael Stahl-David. But even here, the film’s missing something, be it whimsy, be it depth, that would turn it from something comfortably watchable into something a bit more emotionally involving. I’m not so much looking for nihilist philosophical monologues here (though I’d certainly be game for that), as for any sign the film actually has a philosophy, or emotional politics, beyond what the genres it belongs to ask of it. It looks like the comparative glut of more or less quirky indie romances with fantasy plot base that went on when this was made has resulted in heightened expectations from me for these films to go beyond well-made button pushing and highly competent filling of expectations. I suspect if this had been made a decade earlier, and I would have seen it then, I would not have the same complaints about In Your Eyes.
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