Reviews

The producers of Bridget Jones’s Diary and Love Actually are trying to bring back the British rom-com with Finding Emily.

The film stars Spike Fearn as Owen, a musician working as a sound engineer at a student nightclub in Manchester. During a shift one night, he meets the girl of his dreams – Emily – and she gives him her number before leaving for the next stop on her bar crawl.

But the next day, Owen discovers that Emily’s number is missing a digit and he can’t get hold of her. The desperate Owen, lovesick for his crush, tries his best to track her down, but with only a first name to work with and more than 300 Emilys at the university, he doesn’t get very far.

Owen’s mission catches the attention of American psychology student Emily (Angourie Rice), who is working on a dissertation about how love makes people crazy and drives them into self-sabotaging behaviours. Owen is the perfect case study for her thesis, so she befriends him without disclosing the true nature of her companionship.

Finding Emily harkens back to ’90s rom-coms like She’s All That, where the central dynamic starts under false pretences (like a bet in the 1999 film) but eventually turns into something real. Often, it’s the man doing the lying in this scenario, so it’s refreshing to see this gender switch, where American Emily is the morally questionable one.

With rom-coms, you generally know what you’re getting and where it’s going to end up. Finding Emily is no exception to this rule – you can call the ending immediately – but the journey to reach that predictable place is entertaining and funny, and there are some unexpected beats along the way.

Writer Rachel Hirons scrutinises Owen through the lens of today’s generation. Did Emily make a genuine mistake or give him an incorrect number on purpose? Is he a hopeless romantic or, as the university students call him, a sex pest, harasser or incel?

The film sparks a really interesting debate about what is acceptable dating behaviour nowadays. Owen is depicted as a bad guy in the university press and on social media – with TikTokers all weighing in with their hot take – and he can’t escape from the pile-on.

Owen is sweet and kind-hearted and his pursuit of romance is very pure, in a society where anything sincere is deemed cringe, and you can’t help but be charmed by him. Plus, it’s rare to see a normal-looking man with a Northern accent like Fearn leading a rom-com.

Meanwhile, Rice plays a messy, complicated character who makes very bad decisions, but the Australian actress makes her Emily as believable and realistic as possible. She has excellent platonic chemistry with Fearn and it looks like they had so much fun making the movie.

Rom-com fans deserve more charming, heartwarming stories like this!

In cinemas from Friday 22nd May

By Hannah Wales

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