Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson are going nowhere in the time-travel comedy Meet Cute
Peacock's puzzling rom-com leaves its talented stars, and its unlucky viewers, trapped in an unfunny time loop
Film Reviews Kaley Cuoco
The first day at any “introduction to screenwriting” class worth its salt hammers one thing home: your story won’t connect with an audience if your lead characters don’t want anything. Yes, yes, rules are made to be broken, and experimental art is vital to the expansion of any form, but I do not think that Meet Cute, a two-hander low-budget rom-com debuting on Peacock, had this as its goal. It is, instead, simply a failure.
Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson, two terrific performers who have done and will continue to do marvelous things in their careers, are stuck in a loop of first dates in this aggravating and perplexing feature from director Alex Lehmann. It’s a gimmick like Groundhog Day or Palm Springs, only this time it’s self-imposed, through time travel. Imagine Primer, but as a When Harry Met Sally-inspired sitcom, then swap out insightful dialogue for the meandering tedium of an endless one act play. (And not a good one, like David Ives’s Sure Thing, to which Meet Cute owes a significant debt.)
The production, hampered by shooting around COVID-19 protocols, tries to liven things up by using Lower Manhattan locations, but it doesn’t have any ideas more original than “an Indian restaurant!” or “the ferry!” It’s exhausting.
The first time we meet Cuoco’s Sheila she’s got the hots for Davidson’s Gary, eyeing him at the end of a bar. She comes on to him, but before they split to take the yapping to a new locale, she tells him she’s a time traveler. She’s making cutesy/wacky faces, so Gary rolls with it for a while. But when she starts finishing his sentences, he gets confused.
Turns out, she really is a time traveller. You see, there’s a nail salon with a tanning bed in the back that can send you back 24 hours. Fair enough. While this date is the first we in the audience see, it’s actually the seventh. She keeps returning the next morning because … well, this part is a little unclear.
Sheila is also a murderer, because each time she goes back in the tanning bed, she finds herself from the new timeline and runs that version of herself over with her car. This makes for a good laugh, but doesn’t exactly leave one rooting for this person as the other Kaley Cuoco tries to escape in terror.
The date continues for about a year, and it includes some chatter with Deborah S. Craig as the nail salon manager June, who seems pretty blasé about this woman coming by every day. In fact, June is aware of Sheila’s ongoing cycle of visits, and their fruitlessness in helping Sheila find happiness, but this makes no sense. If Sheila is finding a fresh Gary each time, June should be just as clueless as he is. (Also, does Sheila sleep? Unclear.)
Eventually, things start to go south, because Sheila finds a way to travel even further back in time in an attempt to “fix” the upsetting incidents from Gary’s youth. His father was never around to play ball with him, so a mysterious uncle (Cuoco in a fake mustache) shows up with a mitt. She also drops by during Gary’s awkward teen years as a Russian pizza delivery girl to liberate him from virginity. When the latest Gary—whose easier path in life has turned him into a bit of a tech douche—learns about this time-warp tinkering he gets angry. Eventually he shouts that he can’t do this anymore. Do what anymore? This is all brand new to him if you follow the logic of this story!
Clearly, some audience members (raises hand) get more hung up on rules than others. Rian Johnson’s Looper and its dismissal about making sense of time travel (“we’re gonna’ be here all day making diagrams with straws”) is great, but you need a modicum of logic to make the hook work, and Meet Cute simply does not have it.
This would be more forgivable if the scene work were excellent. Though these actors are game, the script is pedestrian. Davidson is his typically low-key charming self, as seen in the quite good The King Of Staten Island and the even better Big Time Adolescence (streaming on Hulu right now if you’ve missed it), and hanging out with him and Cuoco in full daffy mode borders on charming. But there aren’t any clever moments, just a parade of clichés you’ve seen in many other indie romances.
In 2019 Alex Lehmann released another two-hander, the far more successful Paddleton with Ray Romano and Mark Duplass. It, too, is mostly just two people talking, but there’s a depth and humanity that is absent here. Meet Cute has all the unoriginality of a forgettable low-budget picture—and eye-rolling dialogue like making Kaley Cuoco say “all the things!”—plus a central premise that just doesn’t work. Don’t feel bad if you stand this one up.
58 Comments
Why does that guy on the right look like he can be teleported into a city he’s never been to before and within five minutes find someone from which he can score meth?
go watch his Hot Ones appearance and then imagine him trying to score anything spicier than a spent joint
He doesn’t need 5 minutes to score it, he needs 5 minutes to make it. He’s Meth Macgyver (“Methgyver.”)“All I need is decongestant spray, a K-cup, 5 baby aspirin, a ballpoint pen, and some scotch tape…”
Ben Methfleck.
“… and meth”
Yeah he looks like the textbook version of someone mid bender.
[sigh]Really? “that guy on the right”? It’s clearly Pete Davidson. Even if you didn’t know that, the review names him multiple times and you’re capable of using context clues.Lazy dismissal in service of a cheap “meth guy” joke…
Ok everyone, we’re not living up to necgray’s standard of comedy. We gotta try harder.
I mean… At least try a joke that Davidson hasn’t made himself on multiple occasions.
Pete DavidsonWho?
The male lead referenced multiple times in the review.I get your “joke” but even taken at face value it’s idiotic because of context clues.
Starlord
I have that skill, but with weed.
That’s how he got to our timeline in the first place.
The ads for this one made it look super boring and I say this as someone who thinks Kaley Cuoco is absolutely delightful in most things. It comes across as a mumblecore revival with slightly clearer dialogue.
yeah, if you cast Kaley Cuoco and you still have a boring film, then my god is must be a boring film.
Yeah she is almost always a delight in ANYTHING she is in.
To be fair, she genuinely looks like she’s enjoying playing this character. And they comes across at least.
She also drops by during Gary’s awkward teen years as a Russian pizza delivery girl to liberate him from virginity.Well, that’s not creepy at all.
One of the creepier 30 Rock exchangesPete: Guys, a teacher preying on a student is wrong. . . Frank: Yeah. Pete: . . .if the teacher is male and the student is female. What happened to Frank is awesome!
That was the point. The irony was the point. Wake up.
I got it. I just always felt the characters’ enthusiasm drowned out the point.
(that was also the point)
Was that not obvious satire of how society itself treats those differently?
There was a teacher up the road from me who slept with her male students on the regular – 30+ times, gave them her personal phone number – and it was impressive how much every journo managed to avoid the word “paedophile” in their coverage. (It was OK, though: the teacher had recently been through a “bad breakup”, and had “put on weight” and “did it out of low self-esteem”.)
Yeah, that’s what I was here to comment on. That seems like an…iffy writing decision?
I mean, her character seems to be a murderous psychopath. Doing a creepy sex thing hardly moves the needle.
Not the same person. The Russian pizza delivery girl appears to be a prostitute named Tatiana she hired to do that job.
Yeah, still creepy.
Sure, but she undoes it later, and in a basically-sweet way that’s less cruel than with her other undoings.
It is creepy (she’s a disaster), but the movie does at least acknowledge that she’s a disaster, undercutting someone else’s agency because of God powers, which makes it far less creepy than About Time, the cruelly masturbatory power fantasy this movie made me think of. (there’s a recent Twilight Zone episode that is a better response/rethink of the concept. Topher Grace! He’s perfect for this!)
Pete Davidson is “talented?” Ummmm, okay if you say so.
I’m not sure if he has any acting range, but yes, he’s very good at playing a non-affected version of a character type that is in some demand these days. I see Selina Gomez as filling a similar niche on the actress side, but the recent season of Only Murders suggests she may be a bit stronger a performer than that.
He’s not talented. You have bad taste.
Redacted – shouldn’t have fed the troll.
Ah, you read some of the other replies he’s given?
No, it’s easily discernable from this one.
Respect your opinion but I thought it was great and so was the chemistry. More dark than a comedy and better than most of the crap I’ve seen lately. What does Sheila want? She wants the perfect date to last forever because the rest of her life is shit. She was going to kill herself the day before. She wants to feel something different. She keeps going back and back to relive that great feeling but things begin to change in Gary. So she goes further back and tries to fix everything in his past but only makes it worse. Just like June said, if you try to erase something from someone’s life, you erase a part of them. It makes sense as Gary’s personality starts to change and after a while is starting to have side effects from the constant first date. He says he has this weird feeling of being trapped. It reminds me the effects of depression and wanting to hold onto a euphoria, willing do anything to keep it, such as killing her other self over and over.
It does sound like the logical inconsistencies (like the salon owner situation) would be bad enough to be distracting, though. I’m not asking that the screenwriter be expert in metaphysics, but a little thoughtfulness would be appreciated.
I’m the type that can gloss over things I don’t think are important but I know some might think it’s important. It’s interesting how many different ways people approach movies.
see, the way you describe it makes it sound really interesting.as a rom-com, it sounds dreadful.
Thank you! If you actually saw it and didn’t like it I respect your opinion but just commenting because you don’t like Pete Davidson is ridiculous. By the way I love your username. LOL
And aren’t we all grateful for that
This is not a rom com and it’s not a sci-fi. I saw it as a dark comedy. No, we don’t know where the tanning bed came from or how it works but we don’t need to know. That is not essential to the movie. June is basically the ride operator like at an amusement park. June knew what she was doing when she sent Gary to 1989, when Sheila was a little girl. This first date euphoria Sheila wants over and over is basically a drug…and after a while it doesn’t work anymore until you hit rock bottom. I think it’s a good representation of mental health issues a lot struggle with today and the sense of feeling helpless and stuck. It was great to see Davidson as a character that isn’t always smoking weed. I wouldn’t stay away just because Davidson is in it. I keep seeing bad reviews but whatever. Some of my favorite movies had bad reviews. lol
Chasing the high of a past feeling you long for. Damn, captured what it triggers entirely.The bad Christmas themed lights in the restaurant, that I’m sure everyone has experienced during the holidays, look uncomfortably fake in summer.
Rian Johnson’s Looper and its dismissal about making sense of time travel (“we’re gonna’ be here all day making diagrams with straws”) is great
No, it isn’t. The resolution of the film really depends on the mechanics of that specific version of time-travel, and the rules indicated are incoherent.
This movie looks ugly. Every shot in the trailer is dim, side lit. It just looks the way I’d imagine a well down college film shot on an iPhone would look.
Are they under a giant Christmas tree?
Could be symbolic of his time keeps going around them, but she’s fixated on this moment and doesn’t see it. Case in point the Christmas lights in the Indian restaurant.
Hahaha… Yep, motivation is one of the first things I teach in my screenwriting class! Day 1 is the 4 basic story elements: protagonist, motivation, obstacles, and satisfaction.
Missed opportunity to capitalize on Davidson’s rumored endowment and name the movie after its characters. Who wouldn’t watch a movie called “Meat. Cute.”
Are you trying to say a Meat Cube? Like a little cube of meat? Because that’s a good idea actually.
Quite relieved to be made aware that Pete is terrific and we can a steady stream of marvelous output for years to come.
pete davidson is a performer “who [has] done and will continue to do marvelous things in their [career].” good take. no wonder this site is absolute dogshit.
People finishing other people’s sentences scenes won’t top this…. and especially this.
Disagree, with respect. It was an inoffensive movie that yes was white obvious, but not once during the movie did my attention drift. I don’t know if I’d watch it again for a while, but, this felt like watching a vlog with substance, especially when we had no clue what it was about.Also, “nothing good ever came from an Amber” is justification alone for many awards.
The movie was like.. half a step above mediocre.. but the things you are complaining about are addressed in the movie.
-She does not go back as a Russian pizza delivery driver, she sends him a prostitute.. a completely separate person. Still creepy, but not as creepy as you indicate.
-Its explained why she comes back the next morning. She only gets 24 hours, then she comes back to her starting point (which means she does not have to kill her day younger self, she’s doing that as therapy if anything). That starting point happens to be the next morning right after the date. Which means..
– She likely sleeps (and possibly other things) in the hours between sunrise (after killing her younger self) and when they meet at the bar, which in theory is like.. 14 hours.. plenty of time for sleep. Its also plenty of time to change that F’in dress, which annoyed the crap out of me.
-Its shown, many times, that memories can persist for the non-time traveler. This is first shown when Gary knew where Sheila lived without her telling him on like their 7th date. Hence how June knew. Hence how Gary started putting together things later.
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You not understanding something can be a sign of bad writing. Trying to get across the details is important.
However it is not a sign of plot holes, which is what you seem to indicate.