Rachael Leigh Cook and Damon Wayans Jr are a definite charming few in a ridiculous but mostly entertaining intimate comedy

Rachael Leigh Cook and Damon Wayans Jr celebrity in appreciate Guaranteed, a movie that simply about fits the brief. Photograph: Netflix

A cursory look into Netflix’s daily top ten informs us a lot of revealing things, chief among them that quality, or shortage thereof, doesn’t have bearing on viewership, but additionally, further along the list is definitely an underlined reminder that nostalgia nevertheless rules. It is not merely any nostalgia however a kind that is specific transports thirtysomething millennials back again to their teenage years, as evidenced because of the current success of Clueless or Jurassic Park or Moesha or Friends, comfortable access to movies and shows most of us needed to struggle for back when you look at the time.

It’s filtered right through to their initial content strategy too, whether it is rebooting The Babysitters Club, casting Jennifer Aniston in Murder Mystery or Sandra Bullock in Bird Box or Christina Milian in Falling Inn appreciate, the latter now leading to a different fallen star headlining her very own low-budget rom-com through the exact same writing duo of Hilary Galanoy and Elizabeth Hackett. This time it’s She’s All That’s “ugly” duckling Rachael Leigh Cook, whose celebrity dimmed instead fast after her Sixpence None the Richer-soundtracked breakout with a sequence of commercial disappointments (RIP Josie additionally the Pussycats). But Cook polish hearts usa is just a face that will nevertheless show immediately recognisable to a generation whom feigned shock whenever she became popular her eyeglasses for Freddie Prinze Jr and ended up being like, actually demonstrably nevertheless appealing, and possess wondered where she’s been from the time.

She stars as moralistic but hard-up attorney Susan who assumes instances she thinks in but struggles to help make ends fulfill, driving a (stylishly) scrappy old automobile by having a Tiffany record stuck in the cassette player. But one morning her luck shifts whenever handsome complete complete complete stranger Nick (Damon Wayans Jr) asks her to accept a unique battle that is legal. He’s been utilizing dating app Love Guaranteed now for some time and he wants Susan to fight their claim that members will find love by date 1,000 as he reaches date 986. And you will probably imagine where this might be going.

This is a slightly above average Lifetime-level piece of fluff that also employs a director, who like his leading lady, has seen better career days like Galanoy and Hackett’s New Zealand-set renovation rom-com Falling Inn Love. For the reason that movie it had been Cruel Intentions’ Roger Kumble slumming it and also this time, it is Daredevil’s Mark Steven Johnson would you a somewhat better task at making their Netflix paycheque project feel just like it can be seen from the screen that is big. It’s a slick and confection that is glossy contains a small number of handsome shots that elevates it simply over the really low club Netflix has set for it self (an external pan returning to comparison Cook’s character alone with wine across the street to her sister’s happy household is unusually impressive). It’s additionally passably entertaining, a silly and forgettable but diversion that is mostly charming should see other ’90s has-beens clamouring for his or her very very very very very own celebrity automobiles.

There’s an attempt that is half-hearted to skewer or at last gently poke at dating app culture plus it’s a ripe area uneasily full of organizations luring singletons in using the vow of love yet fundamentally perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps perhaps not wanting them to suit up and just simply just simply take their company away. But like a great many other movies or reveals that delve into comparable territory, Galanoy and Hackett depend on the weary stereotype of digital courtship dominated by one-note one-joke whackjobs, basing the concept of all of it for a married person’s worst fear of exactly what a Tinder date would in fact end up like. Better writers, such as for instance Issa Rae and Aziz Ansari, also have fallen foul for this and thus it might be naive to anticipate far better here however it continues to be a tiring, simplistic distillation of an even more world that is complex in appreciate Guaranteed, the bad dates get boring real fast.

Cook is a casino game lead though, enthusiastically tossing by by by by by herself to the formula she faces, and there’s a chemistry that is natural Wayans Jr, a charismatic star whom should really be cropping up in far larger jobs than this. It is weirdly the 2nd Netflix summer time comedy to haul down Heather Graham since the outsized cameo that is comic weird because she’s perhaps perhaps perhaps maybe perhaps perhaps not an star who’s particularly adept at comedy and somehow her presence listed here is much more embarrassing than it had been in Desperados, quite the feat.

There won’t be many people who’ll keep in mind it by this time around the following month but within its quick running time, it simply about fits the brief, zipping along at rate buoyed because of the charm of the leads, like nearly fully guaranteed alternatively.

Prefer Guaranteed is available now on Netflix