The first day of any worthwhile “Intro to Screenwriting” course is that there’s one thing to remember: your story won’t resonate with the audience if your main characters don’t don’t. want to anything. Yes, yes, rules are meant to be broken, and experimental art is vital to the expansion of any form, but I don’t think Meet cute, a two-handed low-budget rom-com that debuts on Peacock, had that as its goal. Rather, it is a simple failure.

Kaley Cuoco and Pete Davidson, two terrific entertainers who have done and will continue to do wonderful things in their careers, are stuck in a first-date loop in this annoying and confusing feature film from director Alex Lehmann. It’s a gimmick like groundhog day Where Palm Springs, but this time it’s self-imposed, through time travel. To imagine Primerbut as When Harry met Sally-inspired sitcom, then swap insightful dialogue for the meandering boredom of an endless one-act play. (And not a good one, like by David Ives sure thingto which Meet cute has a large debt.)

The production, hampered by filming around COVID-19 protocols, tries to liven things up using locations in Lower Manhattan, but they don’t have more original ideas than an “Indian restaurant!” or “the ferry!” It’s exhausting.

When we first meet Cuoco’s Sheila, she has a crush on Davidson’s Gary, watching him from the end of a bar. She comes to him, but before they split up to take Yelp to a new place, she tells him she’s a time traveler. She makes cute/goofy faces, so Gary rolls with that for a while. But when she starts to finish her sentences, he gets confused.

Turns out she really is time travelling. See, there’s a nail salon with a tanning bed in the back that can send you back 24 hours. Fair enough. Although this date is the first we see in public, it is actually the seventh. She keeps coming back the next morning because…well, that part is a little fuzzy.

Sheila is also a murderer, because every time she goes back to the tanning bed, she finds herself out of the new timeline and running this version of herself with her car. It’s a good laugh, but doesn’t exactly leave a rooting for that person as the other Kaley Cuoco tries to escape in terror.

The date lasts about a year and includes discussions with Deborah S. Craig as the manager of the June nail salon, who seems quite jaded about this woman who walks by every day. In fact, June is aware of Sheila’s continuing cycle of visits and their inability to help Sheila find happiness, but it doesn’t make sense. If Sheila finds a new Gary every time, June should be as clueless as he is. (Also, is Sheila sleeping? Unclear.)

Eventually, things start to go south, as Sheila finds a way to travel even further back in time in an attempt to “fix” the upsetting incidents of Gary’s youth. His dad was never around to play ball with him, so a mysterious uncle (Cuoco with a fake mustache) shows up with a glove. She also goes through Gary’s tough teenage years as a Russian pizza delivery girl to free him from virginity. When the latest Gary – whose easier path in life has turned him into a bit of a tech jerk – learns of this temporal tinkering, he gets angry. Eventually, he screams that he can’t do this anymore. Do What more? This is all brand new to him if you follow the logic of this story!

Obviously, some audience members (raise hand) are more committed to the rules than others. by Rian Johnson looper and his dismissal of making sense of time travel (“we’re gonna be here all day doing diagrams with straws”) is great, but you need a modicum of logic to make the hook work, and Meet cute just doesn’t have it.

It would be more forgivable if the scene work was excellent. Although these actors are players, the scenario is pedestrian. Davidson is his typically understated charming self, as seen in the Very Good The King of Staten Island and so much the better The great adolescence (streaming on Hulu right now if you missed it), and hanging out with him and Cuoco in full daffy mode borders on charming. But there are no clever moments, just a parade of cliches you’ve seen in many other indie romances.

In 2019, Alex Lehmann released another most successful two-handed game paddleton with Ray Romano and Mark Duplass. It’s also mostly two people talking, but there’s a depth and humanity that’s missing here. Meet cute has all the unoriginality of a forgettable low-budget picture – and catchy dialogue like having Kaley Cuoco say “all things!” – plus a central premise that just doesn’t work. Don’t feel bad if you put up with this one.