Love at First Sight: From the bestselling book, “The Statistical Probability of Love at First Sight” comes a new Netflix release Love at First Sight. Romantic comedies are very formulaic, and generally rise or fall based on the likeability of the two actors involved, and the chemistry that they have between them. It doesn’t hurt to have a quality supporting cast with comics and misfits with their hearts in the right place.
In this tale American actress Haley Lu Richardson (Hadley) and Ben Hardy (Oliver) tell the story of a young couple who meet at JFK Airport under circumstances that might suggest that fate played a hand in it. There is a helpful angel of sorts who narrates at times to the audience, along with providing an “every person” at various turns who interacts mostly with Hadley.
Hadley is late at the airport for her flight to London for the wedding of her Dad, a second marriage, and the Meet Cute is in the waiting area with Oliver who is awaiting his flight to London. He offers her his charging cord for her phone. They talk. They get on the plane and through pure coincidence he ends up sitting with her. You aren’t surprised at this watching it unfold. Yet, in these movies, like in Serendipity with John Cusack and Kate Beckinsale, when the principal players are being just plain stupid, you start to cheer against them a little bit. In that film, the two actors don’t ask one another for a name and number, they have it written on a $5 bill and an old book, and let the fates decide. Ridiculous. In this situation, our characters after a lengthy flight where they have chemistry as they see, hadn’t thought to ask each other for a phone number or email address. Given her history, you might think that shwe would entrust this information to him. Just maybe. They become separated in London attending different functions. We learn more about their respective situations. Hadley’s Dad is getting married to a woman that she has never met. She is in the bridal party, although not too excited about it. Back and forth these two go at these events, and leaving us to wonder (not too hard) when they will get together.
The acting is okay. The father played by Rob Delaney is terrible and cheesey. Some of the lines that he has to delivery are cringy. The movie tries very hard to pull at heart strings, and when done in this way can feel like manipulation. On some levels of course all movie manipulate. This feels different. Hadley and Oliver can help one another out. This whole aspect of data in many details of life is a bit of a distraction. It explains a little bit of the behaviour but in the end the characters have to express themselves, forgive, be positive, looking forward into a new future. Sounds cheesey overall, and yes, that would be about right. If you like this genre of film, there has been better, a number of them starring Hugh Grant.
Murdaugh Murders: A Southern Scandal: Alex Murdaugh is a double murderer. He murdered his wife and younger son in cold blood on his property June 7, 2021. But I am getting ahead of myself. The Murdaugh family has been involved in scandal before back in South Carolina. Back in 2019, his son Paul was the driver of a motor boat late at night where he was drunk and had a wreck with one of the female passengers being launched from the boat into the water and drowned. The first season addressed this whole mess.
This is Season 2. This addresses the father then murdering his wife and son. Oh, and Alec was also stealing money from his law firm from his clients. He also, potentially had some kind of opiod/drug addiction. There is a lot going on in his life.
What is clear from all this is that legacy lawyer (multiple generations in the same town) felt that he was above the law. He is a terrible liar. He has the arrogance to think that going onto the stand in his own trial would allow him to persuade the jury that he was not guilty despite all the evidence mounting against him. The most damaging evidence of course being a phone video done by a family friend looking at his dog on that fateful night. I didn’t like this. I am thankful this person won’t ever see the light of day and freedom again, despite his legal petition for an appeal of his conviction. This is time I won’t ever get back, and a sad end to a very tragic story for this town impacting many more than just the immediate members of this family.