''Meet Cute'' is a 2022 American
romantic comedy
Romantic comedy (also known as romcom or rom-com) is a subgenre of comedy and slice of life fiction, focusing on lighthearted, humorous plot lines centered on romantic ideas, such as how true love is able to surmount most obstacles. In a typica ...
film directed by Alex Lehmann, starring
Kaley Cuoco
Kaley Christine Cuoco ( ; born November 30, 1985) is an American actress. After a series of supporting film and television roles in the late 1990s, she landed her breakthrough role as Bridget Hennessy on the ABC sitcom ''8 Simple Rules'' (200 ...
and
Pete Davidson
Peter Michael Davidson (born November 16, 1993) is an American comedian and actor. He was a cast member of the NBC late-night sketch comedy series ''Saturday Night Live'' (SNL) for eight seasons, running from 2014 to 2022.
Davidson's ...
.
It was digitally released on September 21, 2022, on
Peacock
Peafowl is a common name for three bird species in the genera '' Pavo'' and '' Afropavo'' within the tribe Pavonini of the family Phasianidae, the pheasants and their allies. Male peafowl are referred to as peacocks, and female peafowl are r ...
, and received mixed reviews from critics.
Plot
Manhattan
Manhattan (), known regionally as the City, is the most densely populated and geographically smallest of the five boroughs of New York City. The borough is also coextensive with New York County, one of the original counties of the U.S. state ...
resident Sheila runs into Gary, a meek man who prefers to watch movies over sports, one night at a bar. They go on a date and bond over their similar taste in drinks and childhoods before the night ends. Throughout the date, Sheila tells him that she discovered June's time machine at a nail salon and has been using it to relive the same night for the past seven nights. They end the date on good terms and she tells him that she'll see him again the next day.
Over the course of a month's worth of resets, Sheila reveals that she began using time travel on the day she planned to
kill herself. During the first reset, she and Gary met in a bar and had a nice date. Having felt happy for the first time in a long time, Sheila continues to reset the day and relive the date. After about five months, standing at the spot where she planned to jump off the
Manhattan Bridge, she admits that she's in love with Gary, which unnerves him to the point of leaving the date.
After the 364th reset, the monotony of the same date catches up to Sheila. She decides to use the time machine to spice up their date by going further back and changing Gary. On the first anniversary of the resets, Gary is no longer interested in movies, and is now an assertive and successful businessman. Unfortunately, Sheila reveals that she manipulated his life by taking on the role of "Uncle Charlie", Gary's new childhood neighbor who played catch with him and got him interested in sports, as well as "
deleting" a couple of negative people in Gary's life. Gary does not take the news kindly and the two end the date on poor terms.
Although Sheila goes back to undo her edits in Gary's life, he experiences
déjà vu
''Déjà vu'' ( , ; "already seen") is a French loanword for the phenomenon of feeling as though one has lived through the present situation before.Schnider, Armin. (2008). ''The Confabulating Mind: How the Brain Creates Reality''. Oxford Univers ...
and manages to piece together that the two have indeed experienced the date multiple times. Upset, Gary uses the knowledge he gained from their date, namely the location of June and the time machine and where Sheila used to live, to try to save Sheila from wanting to commit suicide, which had also made her obsessed with him. While he manages to comfort her as a child, this does not change her life.
Deciding that reliving the same day is no longer making her happy, Sheila goes to commit suicide, which June notices and informs Gary when he comes back from the past. He manages to catch up to Sheila and tells her the machine sent him forward, that she did not commit suicide, and that they met again "tomorrow". He walks away from her. This lie works, and she follows him off the bridge; as the sun rises on tomorrow, the two continue a truly new day for their date.
Cast
*
Kaley Cuoco
Kaley Christine Cuoco ( ; born November 30, 1985) is an American actress. After a series of supporting film and television roles in the late 1990s, she landed her breakthrough role as Bridget Hennessy on the ABC sitcom ''8 Simple Rules'' (200 ...
as Sheila
*
Pete Davidson
Peter Michael Davidson (born November 16, 1993) is an American comedian and actor. He was a cast member of the NBC late-night sketch comedy series ''Saturday Night Live'' (SNL) for eight seasons, running from 2014 to 2022.
Davidson's ...
as Gary
* Deborah S. Craig as June
In addition,
Kevin Corrigan
Kevin Corrigan (born ) is an American character actor. He has appeared mostly in independent films and television since the 1990s, including as Uncle Eddie on the sitcom ''Grounded for Life'' (2001–2005). His film appearances include support ...
is Phil the bartender, Rock Kohli is Amit the waiter and
Hari Nef
Hari Nef (born October 21, 1992) is an American actress, model, and writer. Nef's breakthrough role was Gittel in the Amazon original series '' Transparent'', for which she was nominated for a SAG award in 2016. She made her runway debut at New ...
is Chai the ice cream vendor; all three have extended screen time in the
mid-credits montage of scene variations.
Production
In June 2021, it was announced that
Kaley Cuoco
Kaley Christine Cuoco ( ; born November 30, 1985) is an American actress. After a series of supporting film and television roles in the late 1990s, she landed her breakthrough role as Bridget Hennessy on the ABC sitcom ''8 Simple Rules'' (200 ...
and
Pete Davidson
Peter Michael Davidson (born November 16, 1993) is an American comedian and actor. He was a cast member of the NBC late-night sketch comedy series ''Saturday Night Live'' (SNL) for eight seasons, running from 2014 to 2022.
Davidson's ...
would play the lead roles in a romantic comedy film. It was also announced that the film would be directed by Alex Lehmann.
The film's screenplay, written by Noga Pnueli, was featured on the 2018
Black List
Blacklisting is the action of a group or authority compiling a blacklist (or black list) of people, countries or other entities to be avoided or distrusted as being deemed unacceptable to those making the list. If someone is on a blacklist, t ...
, which compiles the best unproduced scripts of the year.
The film is produced by
Akiva Goldsman
Akiva J. Goldsman (born July 7, 1962) is an American filmmaker. He is known for making motion pictures and adaptations of popular novels.
Goldsman's filmography as a screenwriter includes '' The Client''; '' Batman Forever'' and its sequel '' ...
, Gregory Lessans, and Rachel Reznick for Weed Road Pictures, and Santosh Govindaraju and Dan Reardon for Convergent Media.
Filming
Principal photography
Principal photography is the phase of producing a film or television show in which the bulk of shooting takes place, as distinct from the phases of pre-production and post-production.
Personnel
Besides the main film personnel, such as a ...
began in August 2021 in New York City. On August 27, 2021, Cuoco announced that filming had wrapped.
Reception
On the
review aggregator
A review aggregator is a system that collects reviews of products and services (such as films, books, video games, software, hardware, and cars). This system stores the reviews and uses them for purposes such as supporting a website where users ...
website
Rotten Tomatoes
Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wang ...
, the film holds an approval rating of 57% based on 28 reviews, with an average rating of 6.1/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "Its charming stars notwithstanding, the middling ''Meet Cute'' offers little to set itself apart in the ever-more-crowded 'time loop romcom' subgenre."
Metacritic
Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...
, which uses a
weighted average
The weighted arithmetic mean is similar to an ordinary arithmetic mean (the most common type of average), except that instead of each of the data points contributing equally to the final average, some data points contribute more than others. The ...
, assigned the film a score of 50 out of 100, based on 12 critics, indicating "mixed or average reviews".
CNN
CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by ...
's Brian Lowry characterized the film as a "modest win" for Peacock that ultimately cannot overcome the formula of ''
Groundhog Day''-style films.
References
External links
*
{{Akiva Goldsman
2022 romantic comedy films
2020s American films
2020s English-language films
American romantic comedy films
Films produced by Akiva Goldsman
Films set in Manhattan
Films shot in New York City
Peacock (streaming service) original films
Time loop films