A Review of Someone Like You by Nick Olszyk
Distribution: Fathom Events
MPAA Rating, G
USCCB Rating, Not Rated at the Time of this Review
Reel Rating, One Reel
Someone
Like You is a bizarre chimera of a movie. It combines the cheesy romance of
a Hallmark picture, the insane drama of a telenovela, the Christian worldview
of Roma Downey, and the artistic quality of the The Room. This might be
the first Christian independent film that deserves the MST3K treatment, an
earnest production where laughter is not just a gut reaction but a survival
mechanism. I was reminded of Hank Hill’s wise commentary
on mediocre contemporary Christian music: “You aren’t making Christianity
better, you’re just making rock n’roll worse.”
Dawson
(Jake Allyn) has been locked in the friendzone by London (Sarah Fisher) for the
past decade. When he finally manages to break out and go on a date, she is
suddenly killed by passing car. While in mourning with her parents, he learns
that she secretly has an embryonic sister that was given to another family. He
tracks down this hidden sibling and finds Andi (Mary Hall), another beautiful
woman. Andi is angry that her parents – like London’s – never told her she was
adopted much less as an embryo. Out of curiosity, she returns with Dawson to
meet her biological parents and experience some of her sister’s life. The rest
writes itself. Dawson and Andi fall in love, Andi worries she’s just London’s
replacement, she abandons a good boyfriend and life for an unknown one,
blah…blah…blah.
Someone
Like You is terrible on nearly every level. As a piece of craftmanship, it
is just a small step up from a student film. The sound design is awful with
varying levels in the same scene from different takes and even a plane in the
background. The acting is cheesy and alternatively overdramatic and minimal.
The story is silly and reminiscent of the worst soap operas. My favorite sin,
however, has to be the overuse of a stupid rom-com trope where characters fall in love via activity
montage without dialogue over mellow pop music – which occurs SIX TIMES in
ninety minutes.
This
film is being billed as a Christian movie, but only because it mentions faith
in God a handful of times. There is nothing in the plot, characters, or story
that is explicitly Christian. A film, however, does not need to have these
elements to convey the truth of the gospel. Tolkien famously described The
Lord of the Rings as a religious work this way:
“The Lord of
the Rings is of course a fundamentally religious and Catholic work;
unconsciously so at first, but consciously in the revision. That is why I have
not put in, or have cut out, practically all references to anything like ‘religion,’
to cults or practices, in the imaginary world. For the religious element is
absorbed into the story and the symbolism.”
Yet, if this is true, Someone
Like You still falls short. All the pain, suffering, and heartbreak are
purely emotional. All the characters are attractive, wealthy, young, and
vibrant. The choices they make have almost no stakes whatsoever. It reads more
like a Joel Osteen sermon than one of Paul’s letters.
The
film does raise the intriguing ethical dilemma of embryonic adoption (sometimes
colloquially known as “snowflake babies”) but has little to say on the subject.
A pro-life advocate might be tempted to promote the film as affirming the
dignity of the unborn except the characters constantly refer to embryos as “it”
and make no mention of the lives inevitably lost through IVF. It also never
touches on the morality of removing sexual intercourse from the procreative
process, much less the more complex idea of bringing someone else’s frozen
embryo to term. For a better examination of the topic, you can go here.
Someone
Like You is the worst kind of movie: terrible but not terrible enough to be
enjoyable. It is a painful reminder that even a decade after God’s
Not Dead, there are some filmmakers who believe just a sprinkle of
superficial Jesus talk will make the masses flock. No! It must also be good,
hopefully great. It is my sincerest hope that the next “Christian movie” will
be nothing like this.
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