Love Again

Grade: C+

Love Again contains appealing actors who aren’t afraid to dive in to the material. The main plot point is a coincidence that definitely has questionable credibility, but it’s interesting. Céline Dion, as herself, isn’t shy about poking fun at her life and persona. The heroine’s sister, obviously a supporting character, is compelling enough to make us want a spinoff movie centered around her. Because there are good people involved, and we feel them just wanting to please, it’s unfortunate that Love Again ultimately doesn’t work, and I can’t recommend it.

Though this was recently in theaters, it would have been right at home on the Hallmark channel. It opens with us meeting a very happy couple, Mira and John. After a quick sweet scene, John is abruptly killed by an oncoming vehicle in broad daylight. Though we don’t see it, I bet it looked like Brad Pitt’s fate in Meet Joe Black.

Cut to two years later. Mira is still grieving (“There’s no clock,” a character tells her), and we meet Rob – supposedly a music critic, but all we see him do at work is talk about his love life. He has recently suffered a loss in the love department, too, as his fiancé got cold feet and broke it off shortly before the wedding. It’s therapeutic for Mira to send texts to John’s number, which just so happens to now be the number for Rob’s new work phone. He reads all of these, while simultaneously meeting Mira and striking up a romance with her. He doesn’t tell her that he’s been receiving her dead boyfriend’s texts.

As anybody would naturally predict, this is where Céline Dion comes into the mix. Rob is assigned to get an interview with her. Two things happen that are awkward in their unbelievability: she rudely calls him out when his phone makes a noise during a press junket, then the would-be interview time turns into a therapy session regarding Rob’s love life. One of the great challenges for an actor is to play themselves in any role larger than a cameo. It’s a combination of things you say, and things you would never say, but are just based on facts about your life. Dion has a nice screen presence, and it must have felt pretty raw to act but not act in scenes where she remembers her late husband.

What happens after the second act climax where the truth comes out is shameless, tacky, and plays fast and loose with journalistic ethics – to say the least. My heart sunk every time a character was dishonest. Lying in movies and plays, when the audience knows the real information, always feels like a tactic meant to stall or prolong. The movie ends with recent live footage of Dion performing “It’s All Coming Back to Me Now.” She hits every note with the same power, and in the same key as when she recorded the song in the 1990s. I guess you could say that my most significant takeaway from Love Again is that Céline Dion still sounds great.

Grade: C+