Review: ‘Love Guaranteed’ Proves to be a Guaranteed Good Time for Netflix 

Love, Guaranteed is a Netflix original romantic comedy starring Rachael Leigh Cook (She’s All That) and Damon Wayans Jr. (Happy Endings) The Netflix summary for this movie is “Sparks fly when a crusading, but cash-strapped attorney takes on a charming client looking to sue a dating site that guarantees its users will find love.” Their summary is technically accurate, but it does a poor job of capturing exactly how charming this movie ended up being. Love, Guaranteed felt like a modern day Hallmark movie that wasn’t as predictable as a typical Hallmark movie. The characters are endearing and relatable and every ounce of this movie oozed sweetness. 

Some things I thought the movie did particularly well: 

• Comedy – As a romantic comedy, humor is expected from Love, Guaranteed and it delivered. There were jokes that ranged from puns being told, to situational comedy moments, to great comedic timing. Most of the humor is relevant to today and is relatable, the rest of the humor is just funny to watch. I was impressed at how often I found myself laughing or at least snickering to myself.
• Romance / Feel-goods – Along with the comedy comes the romance. Love, Guaranteed does a great job with the pacing of the romance within this movie. My tolerance for sappy romance is a bit on the lower side. I’m the type of person who gets bored through the mushy romantic parts of these kinds of movies. I was happy that this movie paced the romance very well and didn’t get too sappy until the very end of the movie. 
• It doesn’t take itself too seriously – By that I mean the movie is light-hearted, fun, and it knows what it is, which is a romantic comedy. There are no points where it gets too sad, and there is nothing in the movie that makes you think too hard. It is what it is, and that’s a fun, feel-good movie. 
• Not as predictable as other romantic comedies – I have a bad tendency of trying to predict what is going to happen in a movie, especially within romantic comedies, and I had a bit of trouble navigating this one. We all know the general premise of the two main characters falling in love with each other, but how, when, and what would happen to the story were a bit harder to determine. It was refreshing. 

Some things I thought the movie could have done better (and a ton of nitpicks):

● Unbelievable storyline – I know what you’re thinking… It’s a romantic comedy, of course the storyline is going to be unbelievable, but hear me out. Nick is a man who went on 1,000 dates with 1,000 different women. Supposedly, through all of these dates he acted like a perfect gentleman (which is stated within the latter half of the movie within the court scene). You’re telling me that he didn’t meet a single decent person who he would have considered going on a date with again within those 1,000 dates? Nick is an attractive, rich man who is funny and kind-hearted. I can’t help but think that he would have found someone. Also, in order to date 1,000 women (doing breakfast, lunch, and dinner dates – which is how he said he did it) it would take 333 straight days of 3 dates a day to meet that requirement. We’re led to believe that Nick has not been doing this type of dating for more than 2 years, which is when he split with his ex, so it just feels very unrealistic (which again, I know seems silly). 

• Filler scenes – The movie has a runtime of 91 minutes, and it’s clear that Netflix pulled out some stops to hit that time mark. For instance, there was a random slow-motion scene within the movie which felt extremely out of place. Also, there was a montage scene where Susan was moping. It was meant to signify the passing of time and how sad she was, but it went on for entirely too long and added no benefit to the movie. 
• Susan didn’t seem like she was strapped for cash – Susan must have been wearing a different coat in every single scene of this movie. It was so apparent that my fiancé, who is typically oblivious to that kind of thing, noticed it. You would think that someone who is strapped for cash wouldn’t have a closet full of different coats. Along with the coats, Susan had many different extra-large designer handbags, which are not cheap. And I’m not saying that people who are strapped for cash can’t have nice things, but typically when a movie is trying to convey that someone is hurting on money and driving a lemon of a car, they don’t also give them designer clothing. My biggest problem with this angle of the movie is that she didn’t need to be strapped for cash. They could have just said that her law firm was going under because she wasn’t making enough money on her cases, or something like that. I just felt like they didn’t commit to the strapped-for-cash bit enough?
• Let down by one scene in particular – There is a scene in the movie where Susan and Nick are asked to babysit Susan’s nephew. The scene starts with an amazing setup. Susan implies that her nephew could be a handful to babysit. Nick doubts her and says “Him? Piece of cake” and then there’s a dramatic pan in on this small child’s face, with dramatic music playing in the background. The setup was so funny, I laughed and without realizing it I got my hopes up for this big pay-off but the follow-up flopped. The follow up was a scene where the child is acting like a toddler (pushing toys off tables, kicking other toys, being a little loud) and Susan is standing there with slightly disheveled hair and she’s holding a bear.
  Without knowing it, I expected chaos, which sounds ridiculous, but I wanted them to pan in on the kids face and then cut to the next scene of Susan and Nick sitting on the couch in a defeated manner. Their clothes would be covered in stains, stickers, crafts and would look like it had been tugged on. Her hair should really have been disheveled and there should have been toys everywhere. And instead of showing him slightly kicking toys, there should have just been sounds of crashing and screams from the other room. So, this just felt like another bit of a time-filler moment. I feel like nothing was gained from the babysitting scene and it wouldn’t have been missed if it was scrapped.
• I didn’t care for the villain of the movie – I thought the villain character was weird and I didn’t feel threatened that they would ‘win’ at any point. The villain was just there to be the staple villain character of the movie but didn’t really hold any weight in the movie overall. 

Overall, I think Love, Guaranteed was a really fun movie to watch. It would make for a great date night movie, or it would be good if you’re just looking for something fun to watch. It gets a bit overly mushy towards the end, but it’s well worth the watch.

Love Guaranteed is now streaming on Netflix.