Two college freshmen make a pact to leave their troubled partners to live their best single lives in this well-intentioned but dull directorial debut.
Decades after “When Harry Met Sally” asked audiences whether grown men and women can be friends, another romantic comedy poses the same question to a contemporary college audience. Yet in director Jordan Weiss’s “Sweethearts,” which revolves around two best friends who break up with their hometown romances over a holiday weekend, the traditional question waits until the final minutes to unfold, while a pair of separate screwball comedy plots have not been properly wrapped up. Though the film contains a talented cast and compelling sentiments about self-acceptance and platonic friendship, it comes across as two half-baked scripts fused together, held together by razor-thin connections.
Director: Jordan Weiss
Writers: Dan BrierJordan Weiss
Stars: Kiernan Shipka, Nico Hiraga, Caleb Hearon
Ben (Nico Hiraga) and Jamie (Kiernan Shipka) have been best friends since childhood and are determined to stay together throughout their adult lives, starting with attending the same college in the same dorm at Densen University. Outside of their close bond, however, is a world full of complications, from Ben’s roommate Tyler (Zach Zucker), who treats him like a doormat, to Jamie’s roommate Kelly (Olivia Nikkanen), whose multiple attempts to draw her out of her shell have failed. Even their romantic relationships are causing them problems. Ben’s slutty, long-distance girlfriend Claire (Ava DeMary), who’s still in high school back home, monopolizes his time and takes him for granted. Claire’s goofball jock boyfriend Simon (Charlie Hall) usually pesters her with his requests for sexts and movie nights. All of this has led to the pair becoming class outcasts, and they’ve had enough. 2
To fit in better and start over, Ben and Claire come up with a plan to dump Claire and Simon when they travel home to Ohio for Thanksgiving. They plan to use the house of their friend Palmer (Caleb Hearon), who has returned from living abroad in Paris, and has thrown a small coming-out party. However, from the first moment of breakup day, Ben and Claire face a series of problems, from a bus ride with an annoying, eavesdropping passenger (Stavros Halkias) to reuniting with a girl he likes a little too much (Kate Pittard). Their dates also disappear before they can dump them. Meanwhile, Palmer's trip also takes a few detours, such as learning that his small town has a gay bowling league attended by his former high school coach, Coach Reese (Tramell Tillman).
Weiss, along with co-writer Dan Brier, employs all the typical “one wild night” teen comedy antics with minor tweaks that add a refreshing twist to the stale. Claire and Simon get drunk at a boring soiree, not a loud, wild house party, though there is one of those that shows up later in the climax. A toxic, traumatized friend (Sophie Zucker) from Jamie’s past emerges, not to bully her, but to forgive her and befriend her again. Ben and Jamie are forced to steal a dumb cherry-red tandem bicycle, not a fancy car. And, in one of the movie’s smartest strokes of ingenuity, Ben is caught using a dead guy’s ID by a burly bouncer (Darius “Nastyelgic” Jackson) who just happened to be a pallbearer at his original owner’s funeral.
Despite the filmmakers’ attempts at raunchy humor, there’s not much that’s particularly funny, innovative, or memorable. They over-orchestrate these events, which are thankfully featured early in the first film and then dropped in the future (with the exception of an awkward sex tape that’s finally revealed just before the end credits). Ben and Jamie’s botched frat party sequence is clumsy—the seeds of potential disasters are planted, but we know how they’ll escalate and can predict their ultimate outcomes. The joke construction is cheap and simplistic, ranging from a bitter party girl throwing her drink all over Ben to the drunken tertiary character going full frontal in service of a gross-out joke.
While Palmer has a developed story arc independent of the platonic friends, her story doesn’t align much with theirs. Her inclusion feels vestigial or an afterthought when it should have been prioritized or removed entirely. He is promoted as her third best friend in the opening credits, but is not treated as such in the film's execution.
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