Netflix have just released the trailer for their upcoming rom-com When We First Met, starring Alexandra Daddario (San Andreas, True Detective) and Adam Devine (Workaholics, Pitch Perfect), arriving just in time for Valentine’s Day. Look, here it is!
Seems fun enough - elements of Big, Groundhog Day and a guy getting hit in the dick with a tree. Good times.
There’s juuuuuuust… they can’t end up together, can they, because that would make him a slimy manipulative shitbag, and even though that’s been how romantic comedies have pretty much always gone, that kind of thing isn’t acceptable anymore.
It probably shouldn’t ever have been acceptable, really, the messed-up, stalker-like behaviour that always happens in romcoms, like posing as a French tutor to be nearer someone (Ten Things I Hate About You), creepily filming her all through her wedding to your friend (Love Actually), transforming the whole world around her with the help of Satan in a bid to make her fall for you (Bedazzled), kidnapping her (A Life Less Ordinary), lying to her every day until she falls in love with you (50 First Dates), or any more of the gross tactics employed by the heroes of such films.
And the idea of ‘the friend zone’ in general is just harmful. It only caught on because it sounds like ‘the end zone’, which is a thing in American Football, so it sounded immediately familiar. Like, if you’re only friends with someone because you want to have sex with them, you’re not friends with them. If you’re only friends with someone because you’re secretly in love with them, you’re not friends with them. The whole idea is based around the idea that the friendship you share with someone is a shitty runner-up prize, almost a punishment, because you missed your window to get with them ‘properly’ (regardless of how they might feel about such a thing).
Adam Devine, drinking his way out of the ‘friend zone’
But, this will probably end up being alright, and Adam Devine’s character will learn his lesson, and at the end of it he’ll realise how much he values his friendship with Alexandra Daddario’s character, and he’ll feel bad about treating it as a second-best option rather than an important part of his life, and about trying to be a slimy manipulative shitbag, and it’ll be all happy, and then it’ll end with the suggestion that he and Alexandra Daddario’s character’s friend who’s in a couple of shots in the trailer are going to fall in love, but somehow in a way where there isn’t the suggestion that he’ll constantly be leering over her shoulder at Alexandra Daddario’s character or suggesting they all go swimming or anything. Fun! Modern, non-problematic fun!
Probably!
When We First Met lands on Netflix on 9 February.
(Images: Netflix)
