‘Picture This’ Review: Simone Ashley Deserves a Better RomCom
Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
A few minutes into ‘Picture This‘, I realized that Prime Video already has another movie with the same plot, the 2024 Australian romantic comedy ‘Five Blind Dates’. Both films are written by Nathan Ramos-Park and Shuang Hu. So, I don’t get it—why make the same film twice? It’s like they thought, “Oh, so what if the Australian one didn’t do great? We’ll make a British adaptation with more famous actors.”
Directed by Prarthana Mohan, the British version stars Simone Ashley as Pia, a single 29-year-old running a failing portrait studio with her gay BFF, Jay (Luke Fetherston). When Pia returns to her hometown for her younger sister Sonal’s wedding, her mother, Laxmi (Sindhu Vee), pressures her into finding dates after an astrologer predicts she will meet her “soulmate” within the next five dates.
I feel like even I can simply copy-past most of my review for ‘Five Blind Dates’, because a lot of my criticism for the script still holds. For instance, why make the girl go on several dates if you’re going to make her eventual choice pretty obvious in the very first ten minutes? And again, with less than 2 hours of runtime, there’s simply not enough time to establish significant chemistry with anybody in the cast.
Hero Fiennes Tiffin plays Charlie, Pia’s childhood sweetheart, for whom she still has lingering feelings, but their screen time is minimal, and the sparks just aren’t there. Instead, Pia shares sizzling chemistry with her friend Jay, making their time together at Sonal’s wedding far more enjoyable to watch. As her mom says in the movie, Jay was made for Pia… too bad he’s gay.
Simone Ashley has great screen presence as Pia, a small business owner who insists she doesn’t need a man yet goes with an open mind and positive spirit to the blind dates set up by her family. Some of these dates are truly awful, but the settings aren’t as hilarious as they could have been. The subplot about Pia’s struggling portrait studio lacked the emotional depth of the artisanal tea business run by the protagonist in Five Blind Dates.
Overall, Picture This is disappointing as a romantic comedy, though it does have some redeeming moments.
Rating: 2 on 5. The film is on Prime Video.
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