Love Again: Reading The Texts Of A Deadman

Written by Luke Barnes

Summary

A music journalist, played by Sam Heughan, finds himself in possession of a phone that is receiving texts from an unknown number, little does he know that he will end up falling in love with the mystery sender, played by Priyanka Chopra.

This film was strange, in many senses this misjudged a lot of things. Most noticeably was the tone, there are things in this film that are big deals like the male lead using the texts send to him unknowingly by the female lead, who thinks she is sending them to her dead ex, to track her down and pursue her, but rather than treat this as the red flag it is it is instead set up as a quirky meet-cute.

Moreover, Sam Heughan was entirely miscast with the film wanting more of a bumbling Hugh Grant sort but instead has a brooding and quite intense lead that doesn’t meet any of the boyish playfulness his role is clearly written to have. Additionally, the romantic chemistry between Chopra and Heughan is fairly non-existent.

Don’t even get me started on how much this film goes out of its way to plug Celine Deon, who no doubt Sony owns the rights to her music catalogue, it was off putting and made me feel like I was watching an advert rather than a film.

The film is passably watchable in a pinch and I did think the sequence in which Chopra’s real life husband Nick Jonas showed up was quite funny. Jonas shone in his little cameo role and it really was a shame he didn’t get more time or a bigger part as his character was far more interesting that Heughan’s.

Overall, Jonas is good for a laugh and it is passable if fairly generic and forgettable.

2/5

Pros.

It was passable

Jonas was funny in his brief cameo

Cons.

The leads have no chemistry

Heughan was miscast

It is generic

The tone is off

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