WHAT LOVE LOOKS LIKE – Review

Review by Stephen Tronicek

Alex Magaña’s What Love Looks Like looks like an ambitious project that doesn’t quite come together. Consisting of five stories of love in L.A., the film tasks itself with exploring the thematic territory of what causes us to fall in love, what causes us to get over it and the grey area in between.

That’s a difficult task. The writer of modern romantic comedies, Richard Curtis tried to pull it off in Love Actually and (through these subjective eyes) failed miserably. That Magaña and his team pull at least one or two halfway decent stories out of it is impressive. The best of these five stories is a liar revealed story between Calvin (Connor Wilkins) and Summer (Jamie Shelnitz). After a one night stand, Calvin plays the jerk and the pair leave each other’s lives…until an app brings them back together. While there’s a bit of contrivance in the rules of the app, the story is charming enough, with Wilkins and Shelnitz turning in the best performances of the film.  

However, this charming feeling is missing from a few of the stories. There’s a meet-cute storyline between Nicole (Kate Durocher) and Jace (Trevor Sean) that feels antiquated and maybe a little creepy, even if the actors give it their all. The same goes for a few of the other stories which seem tacked on to keep the runtime up, even if they don’t add anything important to the film’s thesis. 

What Love Looks Like is a bit of a mixed bag. When it works, it provides an entertaining, if a bit trite, balm of melodrama. When it doesn’t, it simply plays like something we’ve seen before.