What Love Looks Like: Light 'n' breezy L.A.-Based Episodic Romance Buoyed by Strong Performances

By Thom Ernst

Rating: C-plus

What Love Looks Like weaves several episodic romances into a comfortable 90 minutes. The film is, for the most part, a romantic comedy that trails five L.A. couples through the highs and lows of their budding romance. This is pure and simple filmmaking in the most precise use of the term: Pure in its unapologetic depiction of idealized romance, and simple in its uncomplicated belief of love’s easy resolutions. Let that be fair warning to anyone even mildly cynical of love’s all-conquering power; the jaded aren’t likely to find much to relate to.

This is standard 80s romcom fare despite being set in contemporary Los Angeles. There are the sweet but jittery pick-ups, ill-informed assumptions, and adorable pets—the kind of harmless diversions, updated only by cell phones and faceless dating apps, that once fueled the careers of Meg Ryan and Tom Hanks. It’s easy to imagine any one of these five segments stretched out to a feature-length film—the faceless dating app segment feels particularly suited to a Ryan/Hanks vehicle.

It’s difficult not to reflect on the film’s definitive, and somewhat presumptuous, title but I would no more hold the movie accountable to its title than I would expect What Men Want (2019) or The Greatest Story Ever Told (1965) to come good on their claim.

Still, What Love Looks Like does conjure up assumptions that a perhaps more inclusive and revealing story is about to be told. Not that anyone should expect a romantic comedy to blow the lid off idealized romance—although, when it happens the effect can be both devastating and powerful, i.e. The Knack…and How to Get It (1965), The Purple Rose of Cairo (1985).

But it’s reasonable to assume that most, if not all, of the romantic bases are covered; but they’re not. I may not be the best spokesperson on the subject, but I’m confident that the perimeter of modern romance spreads further than the young, the attractive, and the straight. Then again, writer and director, Alex Magaña—who also produces and does the cinematography—might just feel more comfortable sticking to what he knows.

What Magaña seems most interested in is recreating every couple’s favourite dinner-party game, ‘So, how did you two meet?’ And like the best ‘So, how did you two meet?’ stories, each segment in the film is refined and polished for maximum romantic appeal.

One of the film’s high points involves a heartbroken man (Nathan Kohnen) who meets daily with a woman (Ashley Rose McKenna) over sandwiches in the park. There is a mystery here, albeit slight, that reveals itself slowly over the course of the film. It’s worth noting McKenna’s performance. In an ensemble cast, McKenna stands out, radiating an effortless on-camera appeal.

Another segment involves a faceless dating app and a blossoming online relationship between two people unaware that they’ve already shared a disastrous date. Sure, we’ve seen it before in You Got Mail (1998), The Shop Around the Corner (1940), and Roxanne (1987) but Magaña, along with solid performances from Connor Wilkins and Jamie Shelnitz, manages to keep things fresh.

That said, romance can be as fickle onscreen as it can be off-screen, and so it is with What Love Looks Like which can be promising one moment and disappointing the next. When not working, the film feels lazy, substituting stale plot lines for creativity and confusing stammering self-deprecating inner-talk as comedy. But when the film is working, that’s when Magaña raises the stakes beyond just asking will he get the woman/will she get the man.

What Love Looks Like. Directed and written by Alex Magaña. Starring Nathan Kohnen, Ashley Rose McKenna, Connor Wilkins and Jamie Shelnitz. Now streaming on Amazon Prime, GooglePlay, iTunes, VUDU and TubiTV.