Set It Up,
Netflix, Premieres, 15 June
Do you remember rom-coms? They used to be a dime a dozen at the movies – Meg Ryan/Julia Roberts and Tom Hanks/Hugh Grant (or the like) starring in movies that were cute and moderately funny and feel good.
This was back before movie companies realised that female movie-goers actually liked other genres (including superhero films).
Now they seem to be rarer than hens’ teeth – on their way to extinction faster than dinosaurs (who keep being resurrected for Jurassic Park anyway).
However all is not lost, with Netflix taking up the mantle and deciding if they can’t get their feelgood points from the cinemas, they’ll make their own.
Set It Up is so fantastically rom-com that you’ll wonder why it hasn’t been made before or maybe it has – over and over, but hey that’s all part of the fun.
Harper (Zoey Deutch) and Charlie (Glen Powell) are two overworked, underpaid executive assistants beaten down by Manhattan’s rat race.
Barely aware of their own deferred dreams, these twentysomethings live to serve a pair of tough bosses (Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs) who whip them into a daily frenzy.
Teaming up out of sheer desperation, Harper and Charlie hatch a plan to become secret matchmakers, getting their bosses off their backs by luring them into a fake romance.
But what starts out as a brilliant manoeuvre quickly spirals out of their control as they realise that being the puppetmasters isn’t as simple as it seems.
This is a fun, don’t think too hard, piece of escapism reuniting Everyone Wants Some co-stars Deutch (daughter of Back to the Future’s Lea Thompson) and Powell as the overworked assistants.
Deutch seems born to this sort of role and Powell (Hidden Figures and Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel) is slowly but surely gaining momentum in good-looking all-American roles so the casting is spot-on and Lucy Liu and Taye Diggs look like they are having too much fun as their overbearing, driven but not too evil bosses.
Break out the popcorn and hot chocolate, put up your feet and switch off your brain for a little bit of fun time out.
– Tania Phillips
