From Jeremy Kibler

Good thing Julia Stiles co-starred in 2022’s Orphan: First Kill because she met and put Esther, er, actress Isabelle Fuhrman at the center of her feature writing-directing debut. In adapting Renée Carlino’s 2017 novel, Stiles has assembled a dependable cast and brings an innate sensitivity to Wish You Were Here, an earnest doomed-romance weepie. Ultimately, though, problems either arise with the execution or the source material itself. 

In a change of pace as a romantic lead, Fuhrman plays Charlotte, a 29-year-old who’s employed at a tacky Mexican restaurant she hates but has no detectable career path. One night while hanging on her stoop with co-worker and roommate Helen (Gabby Kono-Abdy), she meets Adam (Mena Massoud), a tech bro-turned-artist who’s just walking by with take-out food. Adam hits on Charlotte, who initially resists. They end up having the night of a lifetime, first in an alley where Adam has Charlotte help him with a mural and then back to his loft, imagining how their relationship and future would play out. By morning, Adam acts like a different person and Charlotte leaves. As it turns out, Adam has a brain tumor and wants to spend his remaining days with her. 

Wish You Were Here is competently acted and directed, but it’s hamstrung by its own source material. The script seems to be rooted in eye-rollingly archaic values, like where a mother signs off on her son making her directionless daughter a dating profile because that’s what she should be focusing on right now. Also, Charlotte’s best friend Helen (while nice enough to show up at the hospital to see her and Adam) gets a little critical about Charlotte wasting her time on a dying guy when Helen literally moved in with a guy she knew for 24 hours, followed by a marriage proposal. Make it make sense. We won’t even get started on Adam’s piecemeal mural, a cutesy ploy to get Charlotte to remember him.

There’s such a directness to Isabelle Fuhrman that almost makes her feel miscast in playing a character who hasn’t found her footing. No matter, Fuhrman is very good as the strong-willed Charlotte. She’s so good, in fact, that Mena Massoud (Aladdin), while charming as Adam, is clearly outmatched; he’s done no favors with Adam being written as more of a one-note idea than a fully drawn character. On the other hand, Jimmie Fails (The Last Black Man in San Francisco) is lovely, if underserved, as Seth, a very patient football mascot who’s interested in Charlotte but gets made to feel like a mere option. 

The invasive sounding-board characters in Charlotte’s orbit are complete clichés, no matter who’s playing them. Gabby Kono-Abdy (a Jennifer Love Hewitt lookalike) falls into that trap a bit as Charlotte’s go-getter roommate Helen, but at least she makes an impression with an appealing energy. Kelsey Grammer gets one nice moment of empathy but little time to register otherwise as Charlotte’s kooky dad, and Jennifer Grey (while pleasing to see again between A Real Pain and this) tries to brighten up her part with a few grace notes as the flighty, meddlesome mom. 

Besides imparting a wise, evergreen message—live life to the fullest while we’re all still here—and offering a few sweet moments, Wish You Were Here never reaches the emotionally poetic heights for which it aims (no matter how many times “You Worry Me” by Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats plays). Hopeless romantics may fall for it hook, line and sinker anyway, but only Fuhrman and Stiles’ way with her actors can make this mawkish mush occasionally more poignant than it deserves to be.

Rating: 2/5

Wish You Were Here hits theaters on January 17, 2025.

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