I watched Love At First Sight so you don't have to

For a bad, mindless romcom, you can really wake me up in the middle of the night. I can enjoy that immensely. That you know from the very first second which two will end up together and that the dialogues probably make no sense, but there is also a very present chance that I will still have to cry at the end.

But every now and then there are exceptions. It can't be helped; a streaming service like Netflix churns out so many romcoms that they can't all be winners. Just like Love at First Sight, which has been online for about a week now. The film is just as generic as the title and absolutely falls into the bad-bad category instead of the desired fun-bad category. Let me tell you why.

In the first few minutes, we meet Hadley, a girl who is going to miss her flight to London at JFK airport (first irritation: that airport is portrayed so atmospherically and romantically while everyone who has flown there knows it's one big terror). And that's a good thing, because that's exactly the reason Hadley is going to find love. However, that takes a while, because first we need to get to know Hadley (Haley Lu Richardson): she is the typical example of Not Like Other Girls. Hadley is afraid of only three things, including mayonnaise. Yes, Hadley is so delightfully ~quirky~. But she also loves poetry and Shakespeare immensely, because Hadley also has ~depth~. We never really see that depth again, but it's important for us as viewers to be made clear right away that she really does have it.

Then we meet Oliver (Ben Hardy), who — you guessed it — must be on the same flight as Hadley. Oliver is also afraid of three things, including surprises. Yep, Oliver is also delightfully crazy: he became afraid of surprises when his mother got a stab in her stomach during a surprise where she was going to perform as a clown and then turned out to be fatally ill. I wish I made this up, but this is actually how we see it.

Well, they meet at the airport, go eat together, and soon Hadley discovers that Oliver also hates mayonnaise, and this is the beginning of their deep romance. They almost miss the flight, but just manage to get on. Hadley is in business class (that was the only seat left) and Oliver is moved there because his seatbelt in economy is broken, but I guess it was just easier to film in two spacious business class seats.

The chemistry is said to be palpable (we are told), so much do the two have in common even though they differ fundamentally: he only relies on statistics (because: hates surprises) and on order and logic, she is chaotic, is always late, and for one frustrating reason or another has a chronically empty phone.

Then fate strikes: they lose each other when they land and have to go through passport control. Panic. We as viewers already know that they will find each other again, and that happens. And they manage to do so for some miraculous reason within a year. Within a month. Within a week. WITHIN A DAY. And how do they do that? According to the narrator, it is fate: ‘Fate can only be fate if we decide that we want it to be’. No idea what that means, by the way.

Here come some spoilers, although the ending will come as no surprise to anyone. Yep, the two end up together, but not before they of course have the required Big Fight that every romcom must have. Fortunately, their love story doesn't end there: they reconcile, make up, and live Happily Ever After.

Just to be clear: these two people have known each other for just 24 hours, but the film makes us believe that these are the two new Romeo & Juliet. By the way, that's not such a crazy comparison: those two also only knew each other for four days in total and were married within 24 hours. Maybe it's just my icy heart that didn't melt from this film full of clichés and thousands of coincidences, or maybe this film is just a bit too poorly constructed. But if you love super, super, super sweet, then this is definitely the movie for you.