Someone Like You is bizarre. It doesn’t realize how unnaturally weird it is. It thinks it’s earnest and romantic when it’s actually creepy and gross. It seems to have been written by someone who doesn’t understand humans and directed by someone who hasn’t gotten the hang of this whole making movies thing.
It’s about a platonic couple… but he wants more while she’s oblivious. But that’s ok since she quickly dies and her mom reveals that she was born via in vitro fertilization. And she likely has a sibling from a second fertilized egg… so he goes on a quest to find his not-girlfriend’s IVF sister. Certainly not to replace her and certainly not so the bereaved parents can replace her either.
The film starts fairly well and I was moved by the funeral scene. I was thinking this’d be a pretty good tearjerker and, when they reveal the other sister might exist, I wanted to see where the story would go. So good on them for hooking me… bad on them for tricking me.
The sister is played by the same actress (Sarah Fisher) so when the not-boyfriend sees her, all the emotions come back. The new sister though is outraged her parents never told her she was… not adopted because her mom carried her to term… but that she had other bio-parents out there. And that’s a natural reaction… but this film takes it too far.
I slowly started to hate her because of the way she treats her loved ones… and her fiancé who did absolutely nothing wrong. But I guess she found a new boyfriend… too bad so sad… and he’s happy because he gets a replacement. And the movie doesn’t think this is weird?
The way she’s introduced to the town, her dead sister’s friends, etc. convinces me the screenwriters had NO idea how messed up and emotionally unhealthy this storyline and these decisions were.
Not to mention the film seems to be missing scenes, some seem out of order, and the dialog is often cringe and clueless at best. People don’t talk like this… these aren’t real humans making rational decisions. Nor do people recover from surgery that fast either.
I hated these characters, the acting can be amateurish, the dialog is bad, and the direction and editing are messed up. The only thing I can say in its favor is the lead actress is good (even if I hated her character) and it is competently shot with a goof first act. Everything else was put together by aliens or robots or robot aliens who don’t understand the hu-mans.
Score: 63