Love Guaranteed

Directed by Mark Steven Johnson, Love Guaranteed follows Damon Wayans Jr’s Nick Evans as he launches a lawsuit against a dating app for misrepresenting its clients’ chances of finding love – with complications ensuing after Nick finds himself falling for his cynical attorney (Rachael Leigh Cook’s Susan Whitaker). It’s a reasonable (albeit ridiculous) premise that’s employed to pervasively uninvolving effect by Johnson, as the filmmaker, working from Elizabeth Hackett and Hilary Galanoy’s paint-by-numbers screenplay, delivers a sluggish and often distractingly low-rent endeavor that contains little in the way of compelling, engaging elements – with the arms-length atmosphere compounded by an eye-rolling reliance on genre cliches (eg the sassy gay best friend, the fake break-up, etc). It doesn’t help, either, that neither Cook nor Wayans Jr are able to inject much life into their aggressively one-dimensional characters, with Wayans Jr turning in an oddly (and incongruously) lifeless performance, and there’s little doubt, as well, that the almost complete lack of chemistry between Nick and Susan makes it awfully difficult to work up any interest in or enthusiasm for their romantic exploits. The end result is a lazy, underwhelming romcom that generally feels as though it could (and should) be so much better, which is a shame, certainly, given the potential inherent in the setup and the casting.

*1/2 out of ****