WHAT'S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT? - Mark Reviews Movies

What's Love Got to Do with It?, Shout! Studios

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Review by Mark Dujsik | May 4, 2023

Of all the ways to approach this story about modern-day arranged marriages, What's Love Got to Do with It? chooses the wrong ones. It's almost as if screenwriter Jemima Khan and director Shekhar Kapur realize that, too, leading to the odd experience of watching a movie regularly undercutting its own premise.

The first and most significant issue is one of perspective. The story here revolves around Zoe (Lily James), a single white woman focused exclusively on her career as a documentary filmmaker.

Why this particular character is the focal point of a story that has little to nothing to do with her, beyond the fact that she's childhood friends with the man who decides upon the process of—as it's referred to in order to distance the practice from negative connotations—an assisted marriage, is a head-scratcher. Well, it's not, really, if one knows a single thing about the conventions of romantic comedies, but that only makes the whole schematic more predictable and frustratingly routine.

Mainly, though, the chosen point of view for Khan's screenplay immediately turns the characters whose stories are actually being told here into a group of "others." They're Kazim "Kaz" Khan (Shazad Latif), a handsome and successful doctor who has given up hope of finding a wife in the typical dating market of modern London, and his family, who are more than happy to help him find a suitable partner. On the occasion of a wedding at his childhood home, Kaz tells Zoe, who grew up in the house next door to the Khans, of his plan, and with her other ideas being shot down by a documentary production company, Zoe decides that her friend's arranged marriage arrangements could be worthwhile material.

Forget that Zoe's filmmaking skills seem limited at best (She usually holds a single camera by hand, stands at and shifts toward odd angles, and stops shooting whenever her subjects ask her to, even and especially when there's actually something interesting happening). Instead, just consider how condescending the whole project would be.

It certainly feels that way as Zoe asks the most basic of questions, comes across as ignorant of the custom and the very notion of distinctions among cultures, and seems far more involved in her own concerns and hang-ups about romantic relationships than in her subjects. In regards to the last part, Zoe is, of course, very much against the idea of committing herself to a man, since she'd rather focus on her career at the moment. This worries her mother Cath (Emma Thompson), who's desperate for a grandkid or two when she isn't making a fool of herself by saying casually but unintentionally demeaning things about her Pakistani neighbors.

Stranger still, though, the idea of a documentary about this subject, even one filmed on-the-cheap and with an obvious conflict of interest, might be more compelling than the dramatization of a behind-the-scenes look at the making of such a movie. In putting a far more intriguing concept in front of us, the filmmakers here only remind us of the distancing layers inherent to this approach. The narrative is about someone crafting a narrative about this story, instead of simply telling the story. Our protagonist is a mere observer, whose presence is unnecessary for the actual story to unfold and feels like a belittling entryway into the lives of characters who are intrinsically portrayed as "different" by the whole thing.

The complications that result are the usual stuff of romantic comedies, as Zoe falls into unfulfilling one-night stands and a boring relationship with a dull guy, all the while locking eyes with Kaz in moments loaded to tell us where this is going (as unconvincing as the chemistry is between the characters and the actors). Why, though, does Zoe matter so much to, let alone at all within, this story?

It's not her story to tell, mainly because she doesn't figure into it and, on a different level, because she clearly doesn't understand it (An idea the movie itself raises so late that it becomes a last-minute complication, not a question, like so many other unstated ones, that might have been worth discussing from the start). Beyond that, the odd decisions involving the perspective of What's Love Got to Do with It? eliminate the possibility of this tale belonging to Kaz and his family in any significant way. That's simply poor storytelling on the face of it.

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