You all should know by now that we are very, shall we say, catholic in our tastes over here at Constructive Criticism (we’re definitely Catholic, too, as you can see from last week’s topic focus). We regularly confuse the algorithm over here and this week Mrs. Davis decided it was time for us to check out the wide and disturbing world of MMA-themed romance novels and their attendant adaptations. For the uninitiated, romance novels are broken down into sub and sub sub and sub sub sub genres. If you’re a reader in this genre, you are pushed inexorably towards more and more specific tastes. You start by liking historical romance novels, take a path that winds towards the Regency era, then find yourself whooshing around a corner into Jane Eyre-themed gothic governess romances. In this instance, the algorithm recently gave me a hard shove towards modern romances that involve MMA fighters. If this sounds too niche to provide multiple filmed adaptation examples of recent date that we can recommend to you, dear readers, well then you’ve underestimated the power of the algorithm. Below are two recent films, adapted from popular romance novels, that I sort of recommend and one original move in the same genre that I also sort of recommend.
Beautiful Disaster (Voltage Pictures): From the same studio that brought you four (soon five!) After movies, we bring you “Dylan Sprouse went and got really hot.” Known originally for the Disney Channel classic The Suite Life of Zach and Cody, Dylan and his twin brother Cole are former child actors who have been looking to find a place to land in the world of adult Hollywood. For Cole, that’s meant starring in Riverdale and having a very gossip-inducing relationship with a costar. For Dylan, it’s been a less straightforward path. He married a Victoria’s Secret Angel and Hungarian supermodel, got second or third billing in a few movies that sound truly insane (look up the plot of Tyger, Tyger I dare you), and had a small but important part in the second After movie. The last bit of that history seems to have been his big break, as he is now headlining a movie from the same studio. He obligingly got extremely ripped and slapped on a bunch of presumably fake tattoos for the role of Travis, an MMA fighter and notorious ladies’ man who meets the girl of his dreams one day and internally vows to change. There’s so much to say about this movie, and in some format I am going to have to say it, but for now I just want to note that this movie took an extremely straightforward romance novel that’s not really that funny and somehow morphed it into a screwball comedy. And I think the film is the better for it! It goes WAY too far at times in trying to get you to laugh at the ridiculousness of these two people’s love story, but the leads are strong enough to keep things mostly on course. Sprouse has real comedic skills and I hope to see him get better material to work with in future roles, but this is honestly not a bad watch at all. I wouldn’t go into this thinking you’re about to watch the next Pretty Woman, but it’s playful and absurd and the two leads have the chemistry to pull it all off.
Find it for rent on Amazon Prime (for now; will probably end up at Netflix).
Isi & Ossi (Netflix): This is a classic two people from different worlds attract story and its both weird and sweet (and also its in German). Isi is a rich girl who wants to be a chef and Ossi is a poor boy who wants to be a professional boxer. They end up fake dating in order to get what they both want, actually fall for each other, and the rest is history. There’s some interesting class issues here, as well as some geographical references to different parts of Germany, specifically Heidelberg and Mannheim, that were new to me and made this movie feel like a fresh take on a classic story. The boxing stuff is pretty tame and not treated as an excuse to have an absurdly alpha male love interest, like it is in almost every other entry in this genre. Overall, this is probably the sweetest and tamest of the three and potentially thus a good gateway drug if you’re new to the genre.
Find it on Netflix.
Perfect Addiction (Endeavor Content): First, cards on the table, this movie is not very good and there are a lot of issues with the way it markets itself. The marketing, including the written descriptions of the film and the photo ads all make this seem like a movie about a love triangle, when in reality it is a movie about a girl with an abusive and possibly psychopathic ex who manages to start dating a much nicer guy about halfway through. There’s never really a question about who she’s going to ‘end up with;’ the ex is literally in a relationship with her barely legal sister and regularly attacks her new boyfriend, so she’d have to be a pretty silly cookie not to pick the also hot but way more emotionally and mentally stable current boyfriend. But thankfully the movie itself doesn’t really go in for the love triangle side of things. It’s pretty straightforward early on that MMA coach Sienna is never ever getting back together with her ex Jax; she spends most of the movie coming to understand how abusive their relationship was by first, entering into a much healthier relationship with her new trainee Kayden, and second, seeing her younger sister go through the same things she did with Jax. I haven’t read the book this is based on, so can only give you my opinion of the film, which is that this is a totally fine watch if you’re into this genre and have exhausted the other options available to you. It’s a paint-by-numbers rom dram with its moments of sweetness, its ridiculously attractive people doing athletic things, and a few bits of humor to lighten the overall intense mood. Also, Slade from Arrow is in this, and he has a great Australian accent.
Find it for rent on Amazon Prime (for now; will probably end up at Netflix).