Review: The Perfect Date (2019)

SYNOPSIS: To save up for college, Brooks Rattigan creates an app where anyone can pay him to play the perfect stand-in boyfriend for any occasion. – via IMDB

Having an apathetic vibe about picking something to watch one weekend, I figured that The Perfect Date might be the perfect movie because it would require absolutely no investment on my behalf, and probably no need to think, either. The movie absolutely delivered on all fronts in that regard.

The movie totally does not come along and revolutionise the genre. Not even close. This doesn’t make it terrible, it just makes it… ordinary. It’s like… I don’t really have much to say about the movie. I know that sounds bad, but it is true. So this dude essentially sells dates to girls, and falls for the first girl he took out, the one who started the idea. Generic recipe follows of strife with friends and strife with the girl and then happy ending. There. Boom. That is the whole movie, and nothing more. There are no characters that shine above others, there is no conflict that you can really sink your teeth into, there is no meat, essentially, and because it fails to present you with something new, it has absolutely nothing that sets it above anything else, or make you remember it.

The Perfect Date is a simple, straightforward movie. Nothing we haven’t seen before, and that can be comfortable, although not thrilling. What the movie does have going for it is Noah Centineo, as he really is a chilled and charming lead, and slips on the character effortlessly. He is pretty much what keeps you watching. The movie is cheesy, at times boring, at all times predictable, but it is not the worst movie you will ever spend your time on. It is so generic that it won’t stick with you for very long at all, but won’t crush your soul while watching it. There are too many other movies that have done this story before, and done it way better (read: 10 Things I Hate About You).

Review: She’s Not There – P.J. Parrish

SYNOPSIS: They say it’s better to battle the devil you know. But what if you don’t recognize him before it’s too late?

She knows her name is Amelia, but after waking up in a hospital battered and bruised with just the clothes on her back, it’s all she knows. Unable to piece together her shattered memory, she’s haunted by a vision: menacing faces and voices implying her nightmare is far from over.

Relying only on her wits and her will to live, Amelia becomes a fugitive from a mysterious man, and a life she can’t even remember. But the past she’s fleeing has no intention of letting her go. – via Goodreads

I have never read anything from Parrish before (I also know now that they are a sister writing duo), and took a stab at it the other day when cruising around Amazon. I found She’s Not There to be quite a decent read, though not my favourite. I always think that books handling amnesia can take total opposites of the good/bad spectrum. I felt that the book dwindled quite a bit, and could have been tightened up more, but this did not mean that I was not interested in seeing where the story would go. It is also quite a quick read. I have to admit that there weren’t any real characters that I liked in there (aside from Hannah). Buchanan and Amelia were the main characters and were better than the others, but they were still not characters I was completely invested in, if we are being honest. At the rate the big reveal was being touted and teased at throughout the book, I seriously expected something far more intricate than we got, which was a little disappointing, to say the least. Anyway, there isn’t an awful lot to say about She’s Not There. It is a quick, decent read, albeit flawed and slightly predictable at times, but an alright filler if you haven’t been able to make up your mind about what’s next. Or you want something engaging but not overly complicated and dramatic. I know it sounds like I am putting this down, but I am not.