Love Hurts

Grade: D-

Ke Huy Quan and Ariana DeBose are two of my favorite recent Oscar winners. Their wins were exciting. Their acceptance speeches were touching, and are worth repeat viewings. I was optimistic about them working together on Love Hurts. The results, unfortunately, are dead in the water, and I hope this is the worst movie of the year. At an hour and 23 minutes, it’s not short enough.

Quan plays the sunny realtor Marvin Gable. He loves his life, as he so frequently tells the other characters, and us, via voice-over narration. What he means is he loves his life NOW. He used to be some kind of crime/hitman guy. Everything everywhere is all good until some former “co-workers” pay him a visit. They heard through the grapevine that Marvin Gable is still around, and they have unfinished crimey hitmanny business with him. Gable faked the murder of Rose (Ariana DeBose). He actually set her free. These guys know Rose is still out there, and are trying to find her.

Along the way, the villains banter with each other in some of the most forced attempts at humor I’ve seen. They’re never too busy or mortally wounded to argue about opening a can of soda without sharing/asking permission – or to give love advice about being “emotionally constipated with the wife at home.” A romance blooms between one of the hitmen and Gable’s assistant at the real estate office. It’s confounding and inexplicable in every possible way. DeBose gets very little to do other than look cool and fierce. Since her Oscar win, she has either been in mediocre movies (Argylle) or pretty good ones that unfortunately didn’t make much noise (I.S.S. and the criminally forgotten about Wish).

The fight choreography, to my eyes, is just fine, but it doesn’t work as a comedy. The characters and relationships are underdeveloped, but I didn’t need any further development. We are left with so many injured or dead bodies, and absolutely wrecked houses and other locations, with no indication on how all that will be taken care of. Love Hurts, in many ways, doesn’t clean up after itself.

Grade: D-