From Jeremy Kibler

The idea of codependent best friends just being friends and not a couple in a romantic comedy gets tested once again in Sweethearts. Director Jordan Weiss makes her feature debut with an alternately sharp and sensitive script she co-wrote with Dan Brier. It may dance to a familiar beat, but Sweethearts is likably played and snappily written with a raunchy if charming side. 

Kiernan Shipka and Nico Hiraga are so appealing together and separately as Jamie and Ben, who have been best friends since 8th grade. Their relationship is platonic, even though they’re enrolled at the same college. Both of them happen to have long-distance relationships with their high school sweethearts; Jamie is with Simon, a dumb jock (Charlie Hall) who somehow got accepted to Harvard, and Ben’s girlfriend Claire (Ava DeMary) is still a senior in high school (and she never stops texting him). When both go home to their rural Ohio for the Thanksgiving break, their plan to break up with their significant others doesn’t go as planned. Well, of course, it doesn’t, or there would be no movie.

In a way, Sweethearts becomes a more unfiltered, progressive version of a John Hughes movie with the up-all-night shenanigans of, say, a Sixteen Candles. As our characters bounce around town the night before Thanksgiving, director Weiss accurately gets the feeling of going back home around the holidays, like it’s a high school reunion. A welcome addition to the “will-they-or-won’t-they?” A-story is a slightly more interesting B-story involving Jamie and Ben’s best friend Palmer (Caleb Hearon), who’s throwing a soiree the night before Thanksgiving with a plan of his own: come out to his friends (even if they already know). Hearon, himself, is such a scene-stealer, and Palmer’s personal journey of coming out in his hometown before moving to Europe subverts expectations with the presence of a gay high school football coach (Trammell Tillman) and his boyfriend (a funny Joel Kim Booster). Christine Taylor also has a fun supporting role as Ben’s mom, and it can’t be a coincidence that she and the characters drive past a movie theater marquee with The Wedding Singer. 

Substitute Meg Ryan performing an orgasm in a diner for Kiernan Shipka faking phone sex and her Jamie is almost like Sally Albright. In fact, When Harry Met Sally… does get a knowing shout-out as one of the key characters sits down to watch that Meg Ryan-Billy Crystal classic and then gets a possible revelation. Not that Sweethearts achieves that nearly unattainable level, but it doesn’t have to redefine the rom-com when it charms as a winning, solidly wise, less-conventional example of one.

Rating: 3.5/5

Sweethearts hits Max on November 28, 2024.

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