Freevee’s Love Accidentally is everything fans expect from a Hallmark movie, but perhaps not in a good way. This cheesy romance is an easy watch, but it’s far from good. While the cast is decent – Brenda Song is the leading lady – the film is impractical and poorly acted.
Love Accidentally follows Song’s Alexa Parker as she seeks to earn a promotion at her job. This being a cheesy rom-com, however, Parker finds herself facing competition in Aaron O’Connell‘s Jason, who will do absolutely anything to earn the promotion over Parker. They despise each other, so naturally, their story soon turns into a mysterious love story, right? (This is not a spoiler as it is evident in the trailer.) It’s a love story that sees plenty of issues as it unfolds, and ultimately ends with the truth being unveiled.
After her boyfriend dumps her in a restaurant on her birthday, Parker accidentally drops her phone into liquid and ruins it. Even worse? She forgot to back it up in the cloud, so when IT gives her a new phone, she’s lost all of her contacts. Eager to talk to her friend about her broken heart, Parker texts a number she believes to be her friend, only to discover it is a wrong number. That wrong number? None other than Jason, who was also dumped earlier in the day. They spend the rest of the movie secretly texting – well, using voice to text – throughout the rest of the movie, failing to realize who they are talking to all along. At last, not for some time.
It’s a very cliché storyline, which is fine. Romantic comedies are great when they embrace clichés and Love Accidentally would’ve easily been one of them if the story was stronger. While the whole voice to text thing was more than likely used to keep the audience engaged, it does come across as awkward, especially when they’re doing it in public and spelling their hearts out to one another. It’s an odd choice, and in it is those moments were the acting seems to suffer because of how awkward it is. Song and O’Connell make for an attractive couple, but there is absolutely no on-screen chemistry between the two of them. It’s all the more evident in the final moments they share together on screen. They work well with the banter part of the film, but when they’re brought together and supposed to share a connection, it fails to come across the screen.
The film was written by Robert Dean Klein, whose biggest film is perhaps Little Fish, Strange Pond, and directed by Peter Sullivan, who has directed a slew of television movies. While there’s certainly nothing wrong with two men working on a romantic comedy, there are eyeroll worthy moments in the film that feel like this was written by men who had no business crafting a romantic comedy. There’s a comment made in the film regarding the leading man’s reading material, where a character dubs it chick-lit and gives him crap for reading it. It’s a scene that feels entirely unnecessary; it serves no real purpose other than to get a jab in.
In the end, Love Accidentally has all of the ingredients for a cute romance, but the film doesn’t know what to do with them. Overall, the basis of the story just feels unrealistic and it is made all the worse by the poor acting. It might not be the worst rom-com out there, sure, and I did enjoy it to an extent… but it’s painful to watch at times. Still, Love Accidentally is not the worst way to spend a rainy afternoon.
