Title: Irreplaceable You
MPAA Rating: Not Rated
Director: Stephanie Laing
Starring: Gugu Mbatha-Raw, Michiel Huisman, Christopher Walken
Runtime: 1 hr 36 mins

What It Is: Abbie (Mbatha-Raw) is a young bookstore owner. She’s known she would love and marry her sweetheart Sam (Huisman) since they were little kids. Now with their lives at their absolute best they’re hit with some sudden devastating news. Abbie has cancer. A very aggressive, very widespread strain of cancer that’s slowly killing the still very young woman. In preparation for what might happen, she’s going to therapy to deal with this. Likewise, she’s trying to set Sam up with a new girlfriend…but how do you replace the woman you’re meant to be with.

What We Think: The biggest issue with this particular film is its manipulation. The entire time it just wants to try and make you cry. How it gets that done doesn’t really matter to writer Bess Wohl. Just so long as the waterworks get brought. Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Christopher Walken deserve far better then what this. The dialogue struggles to be funny at the best of times but worse so is that tonally it’s all over the place. It has this issue where it’ll make a joke and then the characters will have this punch in the gut that takes you out completely. Not the best way to get the desired effect and now you have to work harder.

Our Grade: C-, Without the adorable chemistry of its leads this romantic drama would be quite literally dead in the water. Its a lifeless commentary on dealing with an impending loss and one that never gets going enough to warrant its existence. I can’t really recommend this one to anyone normal. If you’re the person that cries at all of the Nicholas Sparks movies this’ll hold you until the next terrible one inevitably drops.