Indie film “The One I Love” may have attracted attention at this year’s Sundance Film Festival, but it doesn’t live up to the hype.
Instead, this movie clearly demonstrates that the Rotten Tomatoes/Metacritic system is broken. “The One I Love”? More like “The One I Shove” in front of a bus.
It’s an abysmal movie; don’t see it. Unfortunately, I did, so I’m going to very specifically and carefully explain how and where it sucked the most.
The premise of the film is that a couple is having marriage problems. As a result, their counselor sends them on a couples retreat. There are two houses on the property, and when they enter the guesthouse one at a time, they each discover an idealized version of their spouse.
Eventually, they realize that the entities of the guesthouse are not their actual spouses, and, understandably, freak out and leave. But the idiot logic takes place when they, predictably, decide to go back.
This film has many devastating problems. Perhaps its biggest is that the movie is so obvious. From the progression of the dramatic story beats to the flow of the dialogue in each scene to the movie’s attempt at cerebral relationship commentary, it’s practically dutiful in its slow execution of monotonous drudgery.
At the ground level, the movie’s largest failing and most aggravating feature is the lack of a script. Each scene is loosely structured, painfully and obviously improvised.
The actors were clearly given simple objectives they’d have to reach, but instead of it seeming natural, the actors fill the verbal space with meaningless chatter until they thud awkwardly into plot points explained obnoxiously aloud.
If the couple’s personality traits weren’t already offensive, it only gets worse when audiences realize they have nothing of value whatsoever to say.
Mostly, the film pretends coyly like it’s not science fiction. In fact, even calling it “science fiction” is giving it far too much credit for the petulant, small-minded ideas it has the gall to expound.
For most of the movie’s slow burn, it’s not clear what the changeling spouse i, or where they come from. Normally that would be fine, but some mysteries are better left unsolved.
Since the real versions of the spouses never seem to interact with their own doppelganger selves it seems at first that the doppelgangers are a direct reflection of what each character wants in their spouse.
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But, nope! Screw that, the movie says. Eventually it’s established that the changeling spouses are independent and autonomous entities, not psychic projections or emotional manifestations of the couple’s desires or relationship issues.
Not even a little.
Instead, the real husband discovers that he was calling his friends and family, asking about personal information about himself! Great Scott! The plot thickens!
But if they’re real, then how do they teleport or turn invisible or whatever?
When the goofy “Peter and the Wolf” soundtrack kicks in for dramatic effect, it becomes thoroughly impossible to take anything that happens seriously.
The real narrative swill is about three-quarters of the way through the film. The changeling wife comes charging in out of nowhere to exposition-dump all over the real husband’s face. The information she reveals is unclear. “There are no rules!” The movie portrays this with the swinging of its foreboding script. “By the way, here are the rules.”
In the final act the changeling husband tries running off the property and collides with some kind of magic force field and dies. The movie’s force field was not established beforehand as playing into the plot. The introduction of this prop was just a confusing plot device born of pure stupidity and laziness. “Oh no! The script is due TOMORROW?!”
Then the hackneyed ending is so deadened and lame, it manages to be both gutless and somehow meaningless.
It left me with a pile of questions, the chief of which was, “Why in God’s name did I watch this shriveled refuse-stain excuse for a movie?”
Graham Gentz is a columnist and reviewer for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at culture@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
