WISH YOU WERE HERE (2025) - Mark Reviews Movies

Wish You Were Here, Lionsgate

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Review by Mark Dujsik | January 16, 2025

The reason Wish You Were Here fails as a romance is a simple one: The romance isn't really there. This isn't to say anything about the characters, the chemistry between the actors, or anything specific about the portrayal of the love story of co-writer/director Julia Stiles' feature debut. No, it really is something very fundamental: The story barely spends time with its central romance.

That story, based on a novel by co-screenwriter Renée Carlino, follows Charlotte (Isabelle Fuhrman), a young woman in her 20s who bypassed college, is living on paychecks from her job as a server at a restaurant and the dwindling college fund her parents set up for her, and has no idea what she'll do when that cash reserve runs out. Charlotte can barely make it on her own now, living in an apartment with best friend Helen (Gabby Kono-Abdy) and still needing occasional financial support from her parents (played by Jennifer Grey and Kelsey Grammer).

One night after a bad day on the job that resulted in Helen quitting and the roommates having some consolatory drinks, a young man wanders down the street where they live. He asks for directions, flirts a bit with Charlotte, gives Helen some of his takeout food, and introduces himself as Adam (Mena Massoud).

Charlotte's suspicious of the stranger, but soon enough, all of those worries disappear once she spots him wandering the street outside her place later. Look, the guy's charming enough, but considering just how doubtful she is of this strange meeting and his odd return, Charlotte seems to undergo a complete turnaround of character for this whole thing to unfold (For what it's worth, though, Fuhrman's performance feels grounded, despite the unfocused narrative and tonal ride surrounding her).

It must unfold, though, and quickly, too, because Adam will soon be out of the picture for a lengthy stretch of this story for reasons that turn out to be wholly manipulative. Charlotte and Adam get some drinks, talk at the bar about this from their respective pasts and that from their potential futures, hang out in an alley so that he can put some art on a wall, and eventually go back to his apartment. There's a woman named Stacy (Jane Stiles) waiting for Adam's return, and once we figure out what's actually going on with the young man, it's very luck—quite contrived, even—that she just happens to be there to meet Charlotte at that exact moment.

Anyway, the two spend the night together playacting to be a long-time couple, but the next morning, Adam is in physical pain and a state of frustrated confusion. He's irritated that Charlotte pretended to be his girlfriend, so she leaves and doesn't hear from or see him for the entire second act of the movie.

It's an intentional bit of storytelling on the part of Carlino and Stiles, because the gimmick here is that the odd but cutesy romance of Charlotte and Adam's first unexpected date turns into a tragic but somehow still-cutesy romance in the rushed third act. In between, Charlotte has to deal with some changes, namely Charlotte using a dating app to spend some time with nice guy Seth (Jimmie Fails), Helen moving out following a whirlwind romance of her own, and our protagonist realizing that she has to get her life in order very soon.

There is a point to these assorted subplots, acts of misdirection, and delays from the love story established at the start. However, it's difficult to figure out any reason that goes deeper than the filmmakers trying to shock us with a major revelation. Whether or not to disclose the exact nature of that revelation is also tough to determine. One can probably guess from Adam's earlier behavior and some aforementioned hints about the turn of tone in this romance, but since the movie waits until its final act to actually tell us what this story is about, it would be unfair to say it directly here.

Instead, it's better just to say that the turn is a lot, comes almost completely out of the blue, and raises ideas that need more time to breathe than Wish You Were Here offers. After the weird first date and the sitcom-like branches into comedy that follow it, the severity of what Charlotte and Adam have to experience is a genuine surprise, albeit in a frustrating way. The sudden tugging at the audience's emotions is so extreme that the whole gimmick reveals itself to be nakedly calculating, and since the movie contrives such a huge gap in the story of this romance, it doesn't earn what the movie is so blatantly attempting.

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