Directed By Tyler Russell

Starring – Sarah Fisher, Jake Allyn, Lynn Collins

The Plot – Based on the popular novel by #1 NY Times Bestselling author Karen Kingsbury, the film is an achingly beautiful redemptive love story. Shocking news hits after young architect Dawson Gage (Allyn) loses his best friend, London Quinn (Fisher). Now in his heartbreak, Dawson is compelled to launch an impossible search for London’s secret twin sister (Also Fisher), twins separated as embryos. But along the way, Dawson never planned to fall in love.

Rated PG for thematic material

Someone Like You (2024) Official Trailer 2 – Karen Kingsbury Productions (youtube.com)

POSITIVES

Truthfully, very little effectively dispels the preconceived notions within a blandly dull series of trailers that accommodated the movie’s marketing, but there are some refreshing instances of production values that helped evade the budgetary limitations that nearly doom so many of these movies on arrival. For starters, the cinematography here from Trevor K. Ball, who also serves as the movie’s editor, is quite ambitious, especially in the profound sense of personality that he elicits in the movie’s natural elements of lighting that feed into the emotionality of the characters. Aside from Ball zeroing in and articulating the breathtaking scenery of the small town lakeside setting, the permeating exubberance of warmth that he delivers in every frame is quite surprising for a faith-based movie, commanding attention in the elements of imagery where the script and ensuing character arcs aren’t always as fortunate. In addition, the movie’s soundtrack selections prove that some money went into creating a lightly indulging atmosphere, with top 40 pop radio selections that are a welcome change to inspirational hymns we’re typically given. While songs like The Rascals “A Beautiful Morning”, or Colbie Caillat’s “Fallin For You” are obviously present in endearing transitional sequences, it would be easy to expect them to be covers from a faith-based artist, but the original recordings are very much authentic to their incorporation during moments throughout the film, giving the aforementioned scenic splendor an infectious enriching appeal that works perfectly with one another. Lastly, while the material does them little to no favors in the one-dimensional outlines of their characters, the performances from this charming ensemble are quite integral to the appeal of the audience, especially from Fisher and Allyn, who bring these characters to life with a nuance to complex emotions that feel truthfully rendered and believable from what’s asked of them. What these two lack in romantic chemistry, they more than make up for with the kind of empathy they breed from embracing the vulnerabilities of their respective conflicts, especially in the case of Fisher, who in pulling double duty as both London and Andi, vividly articulates an approach to differences between the characters that make them feel like two entirely different people, despite visual likenesses that say otherwise. Round it out with film veterans like Robyn Lively and Scott Reeves, and you have a rich versatility among ensemble that truly bring to life the awkwardness and pain of these two respective families caught in a struggling tug-of-war, with Andi serving as the link that bonds them together for an eternity.

NEGATIVES

Most of what I expected in this film came to fruition, not only from a predictable outline, which audiences could correctly guess the entirety of with ease, but also flat dramatic emphasis that makes “Someone Like You” feel like the cinematic equivalent to vanilla ice cream. To be fair, even vanilla ice cream has its audience, but considering the script never takes any creative chances or deviation from what’s expected of the characters, we’re left with flatly rendered meandering melodrama of the most obnoxious variety, where a swelling music score rising to ear-shattering levels of volume hammers home the sentiment with the subtlety of a Mack truck barreling through a gas station. It’s not bad enough that the plot has these unintentionally bizarre instances of awkwardness between Andi taking over the life of London, or Dawson attempting to unheathily fill the void of his and London’s family by seeking out someone who looks identical to her, where the proceedings feel like they could evolve into a psychological horror film at any moment, but even worse that the two most defining elements to the film, love and religion, are so undercooked that they feel like tacked-on ingredients to a script that feels like the writers nearly forgot to add into the integrity of the engagement, creating ineffective influence that makes each of them feel as vital to the film’s integrity as the production blocking out the emblems on various vehicles featured throughout the picture. The religious material doesn’t have the persecution complex as some of the weakest films of the genre, but it does contain the same kind of snarky irony to its disbelieving character, in that she’s the one who ends up dead, mere moments after cracking a joke about God that earns her a disapproving look from her longtime best friend, and the romance doesn’t even move into frame until the film’s final twenty minutes, which isn’t nearly enough to craft a compelling dynamic between them that we wholeheartedly invest in. These unfortunate instances are aspects of the film’s biggest weakness, its editing, which in maintaining a relaxed emphasis towards the air of its storytelling, evades boredom for all of about twenty minutes during the opening act, where nothing we’re shown to that point builds any kind of momentum to make us yearn for what developes next. This is an 80 minute script of ideas that balloons to a two hour run time, and between the lack of urgency during the movie’s first half, which remains stalled in the tedium of repetitious of exposition, and the overstuffed delivery of too much during the film’s climatic final act, unloading what feels like forty minutes of developments in the newfound love between Dawson and Andi, shoe-horned into a resolution that on its own merits doesn’t quite know where to end. I seriously counted as many as four possible endings to the proceedings, with each one losing more of the momentum of bravery that I was hoping the film’s ending would garner, yet all of them serving as reflections to a stalled and sedated script that definitely feels in need of a secondary rewrite. It should also come as no surprise that the conversations in dialogue between characters feels as on-the-nose and obvious as it can, without the ensemble directly looking at the audience and winking with relevance to foreshadowing, with the worst of these instances lending themselves to strangely unnecessary opening act narration by Dawson, who illustrates his feelings for London in ways that we can easily interpret with a solitary lingering look between them. The thoughts of Dawson are nothing unconventional or eye-opening in what we expect from his character design, but it is hilarious that the film seems to share my annoyances with them, in that it completely gets rid of his overhead reading minutes after introducing it, to never be brought back to the forefront again, therefore forcing me to dive deeper into the kind of three-dimensional complexities in characterization that can be accurately interpreted from watching them walk down an aisle at a supermarket.

OVERALL
“Someone Like You” is momentarily enhanced by surprisingly effective production values to the presentation, but eventually falls under the weight of its two-hour wear, with inconsistent speeds of stalled and abrupt storytelling, that continuously tests audience patience. While Fisher and Allyn are up to the task of bringing their respective characters to life, the film surrounding their efforts plagues prominence with a predictably bland and at times uncomfortable story, where its religious and romantic ingredients never stir as distinctive tastes to the movie’s soul food.

My Grade: 4/10 or D-