0.5 out of 5.0 stars
“Love Hurts” — released by Universal Pictures on Feb. 7 — hurt to watch. The film is directed by Jonathan Eusebio, starring the lovable Ke Huy Quan as Marvin Gable as well as Ariana DeBose, Lio Tipton and Daniel Wu. Despite the film’s lead being endlessly charismatic and naturally charming, nothing managed to fix the boring, horribly written excuse for a movie that was somehow greenlit for the big screen.
“Love Hurts” does something special. It perfectly rides the line between horrible and mediocre to create a miserable filmgoing experience just not horrible enough to be entertaining. One thing to note about this film is that it feels like a movie that would play in the background of a scene within a better movie. Everything is painfully cliche. There is no subtext, no passion behind the writing, cinematography and direction of the film, and no reason for this to exist. “Love Hurts” is every action movie stereotype rolled into one with nothing new to add. It feels completely hollow.
The characters in this movie are all extremely one note and boring to the point where even the lead character failed to rouse even the slightest ounce of empathy, let alone entertainment throughout the duration of the film’s 83 minute crawl. Marvin (Quan) faced two big problems throughout the movie, both of which were easily wrapped up by the end with no real lasting consequences whatsoever.
The plot follows Marvin, a real estate agent with a dark past who is being tracked down by his brother Knuckles (Wu) after the reappearance of Marvin’s ex-girlfriend, Rose (DeBose). Despite being the co-lead, Rose has exactly one personality trait: “The Bad Girl.” She never speaks about her emotions, never shows remorse for intruding on Marvin’s now perfect life and ends the movie not having learned anything, yet having won Marvin back as her boyfriend. As for Marvin’s brother Knuckles, he displays no nuance. He’s a one note villain that doesn’t have a menacing factor. The movie insisted on a running bit in which Knuckles loves boba tea. It isn’t explained, it just happens. Knuckles will interrupt scenes and even the final battle of the film to hammer home this strange boba tea bit. This was not funny and ends up snapping the audience out of the scene.
This film is an action-romance, or at least it very poorly pretends to be one. There are two “big” romances that the movie focuses on. One of which is between the two main characters, and the other follows a confusing, very odd subplot about two side characters we know nothing about. This side plot follows Marvin’s employee, Ashley (Tipton), finding a supposedly dead murderer who was trying to kill her boss. After learning he isn’t dead, the two fall in love all within the span of around a day to the point where it changes the murderer as a person. This is odd, rushed, completely out of nowhere and was barely played for laughs, yet compared to the lead characters, this subplot is infinitely more interesting.
The lead characters have no chemistry. They have one half heart-to-heart, which is literally just them discussing their pasts together and that’s it. Then they get together in the end. Marvin explains to himself in a strange self-narration that she means a lot to him, and then explains to her that she means a lot to him. They then get together, despite having had no chemistry or good moments with each other whatsoever throughout the runtime.
“Love Hurts” follows the philosophy, “Tell, don’t show.” Every “serious” moment in this film is accompanied by a character monologuing to themself offscreen while random things happen on screen. They explicitly say how they feel, what their past was and how their relationships affect them as people today. Funnily enough, this was the same strategy used in the trailer for this film, which spoils the entire movie including the final battle, all while making it look way more fun and enjoyable than it actually was to watch.
Despite every negative stated above, all of these issues previously mentioned could be excused if one factor of a movie was done correctly: good action. Unfortunately, this stands as potentially one of the most visually bland, uninspired, studio-produced action movies in recent memory. With the film starring Quan, one of the leads of the infinitely superior “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” this movie clearly attempts to take some inspiration from that movie’s fights. With that being said, it fails completely. Every movement felt pre-planned and scripted and almost nothing felt creative. The colors didn’t pop, the cinematography was bland and even the action choreography was subpar at its absolute best.
Absolutely nothing is redeemable about this movie and following his big break in acting, Quan deserves to star in much better. Overall, love might hurt, but not nearly as much as sitting through this movie did. Between wooden characters, bland cinematography, and a boring cookie cutter plot, watching grass grow would be a more enjoyable time.
