With the near-impossible task of coming up with something new in the overcrowded category of rom-coms, the best one can hope for is an entertaining time. Finding Emily works hard to keep your interest and mostly succeeds. The cast is charming (after you crack the cadence of some of their accents), and the story has a few topical moments for the current generation of over-saturated social media stalwarts.
The male lead, Owen (Spike Fearn – he of heavy accent and bad Beatles bob), plays a hopeless romantic who comes into contact with Emily Raine (Angourie Rice), a psychology student trying her best to prove her thesis that love makes you crazy. Together, they try to find the mysterious Emily, a girl Owen met at a nightclub who gave him an incomplete phone number.
In their attempts to locate said girl, they shake a hornet’s nest and create an on-campus social media storm that pits student against student, with the faculty staying on the sidelines until things reach a fever pitch. Using the current social media landscape to prop up the story leads to some of the film’s most humorous moments, and these seem targeted to a younger audience.
Even though the final resolution is never in question, the journey is peppered with amusing side steps and even throws in a false finish or two. The rom-com classification is your strongest clue to what the film will deliver. If that sounds appealing, the time spent with this work will not disappoint.
Rob Hudson
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