Title: Tell Me I Love You
MPAA Rating: Not Yet Rated
Director: Fiona Mackenzie
Starring: Paulina Cerrila, Sam Clark, Kaniehtiio Horn
Runtime: 1 hr 18 mins

What It Is: A trio of young aspiring musicians aim to make it big in Hollywood while staying in a temporary beach house for the summer. When one of the girls Mel (Horn) reveals that her family has a tradition of passing down an incredible trust fund once she gets married, the three come up with a plan to marry each other in order to trick their friends and family into giving them the money to supplement the band’s career and record producing.

What We Think: Elements of Pitch Perfect and Group Marriage, this rom-com flick has it’s ups and downs. The first killer is the abhorrent font choice for the beginning credits (YES I am picking on that, it couldn’t have looked any less amateur). The second major downfall is the very much unnecessary narration from one of the characters when all three protagonists seem to be more equal leads. That being said this wasn’t all that bad: certainly has room for improvement on certain technical aspects (for example, it beholds one of the quietest club scenes I’ve ever seen) and some of the color correction and quality was a tad mismatched either between scenes, shots, and camera setups (i.e., cinema cameras versus the much higher-res, slightly faster FPS drone shots that made them look more intensely vloggish by comparison). The story fits into the formula as you could imagine, though with certainly a few more contrived aspects that stuck out a bit, many of the supporting/background characters served to be obnoxious tropes, and the score often sounded a bit stock, especially for a movie that concerns itself with the music industry. Although on the other hand to give it credit, the original music sung by the characters legitimately sounded like pop music you would hear on TikTok or iHeartRadio, so props to that. Also, on the other hand, I actually found myself enjoying the performance on part of the leads, who do their darndest to spin a screenplay that at times sounded like it was written by a teenager for a YA movie, but they ended up making it sound much more fluid and natural in their delivery. I loved their expressions, I loved the brief snippets where it looked like they were improvising a little and having fun, and you could really tell these people don’t just act, you buy them as musicians, you get to see them legitimately performing and singing well in a few scenes and that was really cool to see.

Our Grade: D+, The grade seems low but honestly, if there were a few technical alterations and the script was more creative some (as well as funny), it certainly would have made it into the C’s. Honestly, it’s fine for watching and was relatively entertaining, through I mentioned its attribution to formula, the plot itself wasn’t super expected, so that’s something in its own right. I suppose if you’re really into rom-coms and don’t mind something a little lighter and fresher, maybe give this flick a spin.