Netflix
The Perfect Date is not a movie meant for me. It features teenagers in high school going on dates and talking about college. Those days are over for me. This movie would have appealed to me 10 years ago. Now my life is centered around babies, bills, and my wife. I will say though that I enjoyed this movie.
The Perfect Date stars Noah Centineo as Brooks Rattigan, an ambitious young high school student who is preparing for his college days. He has his eyes set on Yale, but he is having trouble with coming up with ideas for a college essay as well as money for tuition. After getting paid to take a friend’s cousin to formal, he creates an app which lets customers pay him to be a perfect stand-in boyfriend for different occasions. His different dates include going to a rodeo, formal, and even being a jerk so parents are impressed with other boyfriends.
Noah Centineo is no stranger to Netflix teen movies. Last year he starred in Sierra Burgess as a loser, as well as To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, which are both enjoyable films and he was good in each role. He was never the main star in those movies, so I was curious to see how he would do with more screen time.
Even with a cliché plot and characters, I still managed to enjoy this movie. The main thing that held this together was the chemistry between Brooks and Celia (Laura Marano). Brooks took Celia to formal after her cousin paid him to. Brooks was prepared to have a good time, but Celia on the other hand didn’t even want to go. Their date gave Brooks the idea to create the dating app, which took off from there. As Brooks continued to go on more dates, he still talked about and saw Celia, which grew their relationship. Their relationship was more friendly then anything at first, but as the movie progressed, it became something more. This is where the movie gets clichéd, but it embraces those moments and still lets the actors keep control of the movie. They both were incredibly funny as well as likable, which made the film fun to watch.
The app that Brooks created was well-developed and successful. My main issue with the film was that it never went deep into the app. I wish I would have seen moments of customers browsing through the app and requesting dates. A different point of view might have made the app more important to the plot of the movie. All we saw was Brooks accepting dates, going on that date, and heading back home. The dates were fun to watch, but they were covered by a montage. I felt as if the focus of the film was the relationship between Brooks and Celia, not the app that he created to earn money for school.
The Perfect Date isn’t perfect, but it is enjoyable. I wasn’t expecting much from the film going into it, but I found it to be heartwarming and the characters to be likable. Netflix produces a lot of these teen rom-com films and honestly, they aren’t that bad.
Want to see The Perfect Date and judge for yourself? Click on the image below to see the movie, and be sure to come back and tell us what you thought!
The Perfect Date has a run time of 1 hour 29 minutes and is rated TV-14.
Netflix
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