I recently had the opportunity to watch Netflix’s new interactive romantic comedy, “Choose Love”. The film’s cast contains a few familiar faces from your childhood, including Laura Marano from the Disney show “Austin and Ally" and Avan Jogia from Nickelodeon's “Victorious”. In addition to Jogia’s character, Rex Galier, as a possible love interest to Marano’s character Cami, the other two love interests are Paul Swartz played by Scott Micheal Foster and Jack Menna played by Jordi Webber. The movie opens with Cami at a tarot card reading that shows there will be changes in her love life as more suitors will pop up unexpectedly. As the story progresses, you meet all of her options which include her current boyfriend, a rockstar, and her first love from high school. It is up to the viewer to choose who they want to learn more about, ultimately choosing who Cami ends up with.
I highly recommend watching this with friends because debating what options to choose throughout the movie tells you a lot about who you're watching it with. It makes the film more interesting as you argue about which love interest to hang out with and who to choose at the end. It was really fun to go into as much detail as possible thinking about who Cami would like best as well as who we liked the best. My friend and I took into account Cami’s past, present, and future, thinking about her career and family. The film can be taken as seriously as you’d like. Technically, you don’t even have to make a choice because the decision mechanic automatically picks one if you don’t. So if you just want to watch a movie without controlling the outcome, you can still do that too. Similar to other interactive movies that Netflix has produced, at the end of the movie there are options to go back to pivotal moments where your decision changes everything. This allows the audience to explore other endings and scenes that they might have missed the first time around. Personally, we ended up going through all of the options to see how each one ended with each love interest. We guessed pretty accurately as to what would happen with each guy having already seen where one path took us.
Overall, the premise was fun and interesting but there were plenty of awkward, cringey scenes that came across really weird. Because of this, we definitely had our favorite characters, Cami not being one of them. I think it was a mixture of the way it was written and acted out that caused these odd parts throughout the movie. It was also a bit annoying that Cami kept breaking the fourth wall, talking directly to the audience. I don’t necessarily think that was needed in order to move the plot along. I give the movie itself two out of five stars; however, I give the experience of watching it with my friend five out of five stars. It’s your choice if you want to watch it or not.
Photo: Cotton Bro Studios