Finding Emily: Movie Review

Cast: Angourie Rice, Spike Fearn
Director: Alicia McDonald

The British romcom is back with this novel take on the fleeting attraction genre and the concept of what you were looking for being right under your nose in the first place.

When lovesick musician Owen (Fearn) gets the number of a dream girl he's met while working as a sound technician at his local student union, he soon realises the digits are ever so slightly wrong. Teaming up with fellow student Emily (Rice), he begins a quest to find his dream girl, sparking a campus-wide search and a romantic frenzy.

There's considerable charm in this film that makes great fist of its campus setting and its lead. 

Fearn feels extremely natural as the love-struck boy who's struggling to come to terms with losing his mum and who is refreshingly uncynical about love and ambitions for relationship. Rice is a little less successful as the agnostic part of the friendship, whose dissertation surrounds the idea that love causes self-sabotage.

But as McDonald's film plays out, it lays on the charm and warms the audience to both its setting and it's somewhat corny premise. For the first half of the near 2 hour experience, at least, there's a refreshing edge to proceedings and an offbeat sense of humour at play, with a great deal of heart beating underneath.

It may go through the campus film tropes and the romcom hope moments, but by playing into the idea of the TikTok viral-obsessed youth of today, the film finds a different way to spin the story. On goes from meet cute guy to vilified sex pest within moments - and the real-life parallels and condemnations are cleverly laid out.

Unfortunately though, the second half of the film lays on the sentiment a little too hard as the predictable edge of what's transpiring comes into play. It's a shame, but with the incredible earnest performance of Fearn, the film coasts to the finish line a relatively triumphant success for a genre which has been lacking a new poster child for far too long.