The phenomenon Wattpad Love Me Love Me becomes a movie From February 13th on Prime Video
Love Me Love Me is Prime Video's first English-language, Italian-produced film. An idea riding the wave of the platform’s young adult successes, it is based on the phenomenon first on Wattpad and then in print, written by Stefania S., and features an international cast for its love triangle set in an elite school in Milan. Criticizing the film would be too easy. Making it worse than expected from such a carefully prepped operation, however, would have been difficult. But it’s fun to see that Love Me Love Me has everything it needs to become the next most-watched title on the streaming window, a mix of marketing cleverness and guilty-pleasure trash romance, perfectly packaged in the film directed by Roger Kumble, where the most absurd - and therefore irresistible - thing is that the great loves, the great friendships, and even the great betrayals all unfold within a single week. Intense, without a doubt, and unjustifiable, even though it’s fiction.
Fanfiction tropes dominate in Love Me Love Me, on Prime Video
However, one cannot say that Love Me Love Me lacks attention to detail. Every narrative device ever conceived seems to be included. The girl who prefers hoodies is later styled by friends (in a montage scene) and emerges looking stunning. The boy with a golden heart but a tortured soul vents through MMA. The girl who, at one point, puts on a helmet and rides a motorcycle, even doing wheelies uphill while speeding down the street near her house. There’s also a missing relative whose death shaped the protagonist’s life. And then there are Shakespeare’s sonnets, which of course you’re expected to recite at the right moment, or when a character launches the first line and it’s up to you to finish it.
There’s literally everything (except the song Lovefool by The Cardigans, paradoxically) in Love Me Love Me. If one had placed a bet, it would have been a sure win. From the very first line, "Stay away from James Hunter," designed to warn a young lamb about to get lost, to the classic enemies to lovers moment (yes, that’s in there too): "You disgust me." And if you were wondering which princess nickname James uses for June, you might guess Cinderella because of her long blonde hair and blue eyes, but remember the story is set in Milan at a school for the wealthy, so instead of Cinderella #1, they opted for #2, Snow White.
The cast is the film’s saving grace, especially protagonist Mia Jenkins
The Prime Video film has one major advantage: a protagonist who is genuinely likable, which greatly benefits the film’s overall reception. If even the character played by Mia Jenkins weren’t remotely endearing, the audience would move from laughing at the title to being deeply annoyed. Neither reaction is ideal, but it’s always better to approach a film lightly than to end up hating it.
The British actress has an innate brightness that shines through even in the most absurd situations, like a five o’clock afternoon after-party following an impromptu ring challenge in the school’s basement. She balances the trio she forms with her love interests James Hunter and Will Cooper, played by Pepe Barroso and Luca Melucci. Why the Milanese boys are obsessed with MMA is a mystery, perhaps Stefania S. was inspired by After We Fell (2023), given the similarity of the bad-boy-fighting trope reminiscent of the Dylan Sprouse movie. With more than one problematic moment (violence, primarily) and a tone balancing the conscious and accidental, Love Me Love Me delivers exactly what you’d expect from a young adult film, but one can, and should, hope for better in the future, especially since this adaptation is the first book in a series.