LOVE AGAIN

LOVE AGAIN is a romance about a children’s author in New York who tries to ease her grief over her boyfriend’s accidental death by sending texts to his old smart phone and ends up forming a love connection to a music critic who’s been reassigned the phone number. LOVE AGAIN has a few light comical moments and cute scenes, mixed with surprisingly touching and even profound, uplifting moments, but it has a Romantic non-Christian view about love and male-female relationships, 20 obscenities and light profanities, a bedroom scene, and brief lewd references.

The movie opens with two lovers, Mira and John, meeting over coffee. It’s clear that they’re truly in love. John leaves for a meeting, and Mira watches in horror from the coffee shop as he’s fatally injured as a vehicle hits him. The camera focuses on Mira’s face, and it’s an unexpected tragic moment that lifts the movie above the ordinary.

The two were growing very close, and he was about to propose. So, two years later, Mira, who writes children’s books, is still grieving over John’s death by hiding from the world at her parents’ house outside the city. Her younger sister, Suzy, however, cajoles Mira to return to New York City.

One day, Mira and Suzy are eating at a middle-aged friend’s restaurant. Mira asks the older man how he copes with his wife’s death. He tells her he takes time every week to have a glass of wine and pretending to talk to his wife as if she’s still with him. That helps him ease the pain, he says.

Mira tries to do that one night, but instead she ends up texting John’s old smartphone number. She doesn’t know, however, that John’s number has been assigned to the new work phone of a music reporter named Rob.

Rob becomes intrigued by the texts. All he knows is the phone number, however, not the name of the mystery women. One day, he learns that the unknown woman is meeting someone at a singles bar. He goes to the bar to see if he can determine who the woman is. One of his male coworkers goes with him. Rob spies Mira with some man and thinks this beautiful woman might be the woman from the anonymous texts. However, Mira leaves with the guy and later she kicks him out of their Uber when the guy becomes a jerk.

Everyone tells Rob to text Mira back, including the famous singer, Celine Dion, when he’s assigned to interview her during a press junket for her upcoming concert in New York City. He decides to go a different route when he learns that Mira loves the opera about the Greek myth of Eurydice and Orpheus. The opera is being performed in town. So, Rob decides to start attending the opera, hoping to see her at the performance. On the third night, they run into each other and make a connection.

The first two dates go very well, but Rob is afraid to tell Mira how he ended up attending the opera. Big mistake!

LOVE AGAIN has a few light comical moments and cute scenes. They’re mixed with some surprisingly touching and even profound moments about grief and love.

The two romantic leads in LOVE AGAIN, Priyanka Chopra Jonas and Sam Heughan, do a good job creating appealing characters. They help the movie overcome its predictable plot twists. That’s also true of the dialogue that’s written for them, which is varied, realistic, dramatic, and well developed. Celine Dion, the popular Canadian singer, makes a cameo appearance. The male lead’s character has to interview her for his outlet. In a fun twist, she gives him some advice on how to handle his situation. She also helps him overcome his cynical attitude about love after his fiancée broke up with him several years ago.

Morally and philosophically, however, LOVE AGAIN mostly has a Romantic, non-Christian view about love and male-female relationships. For example, pre-marital sex is not a problem for the characters who live in the modern, urban, “sophisticated” world that the movie establishes. The filmmakers slip a fantasy element into that world. For example, the movie implies from time to time that “destiny” has brought the two lovers together. There’s a reference to “the universe” in one line of dialogue, for example, but other scenes imply an afterlife and a divine providence. Also on the positive side, the movie has some solid moral, redemptive, uplifting elements about hope and healing.

In addition to its Romantic worldview, though, LOVE AGAIN has 20 obscenities and light profanities, a bedroom scene, and brief lewd references to sex and male genitals. So, overall, MOVIEGUIDE® advises extreme caution.