Stream It Or Skip It?

I Love You Forever (now streaming on HBO Max) illustrates with great clarity that its title is not always a noble, romantic assertion. The film is a darkly comic portrait of a toxic relationship starring Sofia Black-D’Elia as the manipulatee and Ray Nicholson as the manipulator, and it finds writer/director/co-star Cazzie David – daughter of Larry David – attempting to walk a tricky tonal line between witty and serious. David’s behind-the-camera feature debut boasts ambition well beyond its teensy budget, but the question is whether it effectively achieves its thematic goals.

The Gist: Mackenzie (Black-D’Elia) has just been chastised for interrupting a yawn. No, really. Jake (Raymond Cham Jr.) needs to complete his expression of weariness and/or ennui fully and freely without distraction, which tells us he’s, well, something, as in something else. To say they’ve been sleeping “together” for two years is way off base; it’s more like Mackenzie’s been letting Jake have sex with her while she fruitlessly tries to chip away at his impenetrable emotional facade. It’s a gross reflection of her insecurity that she’s been enabling this going-absolutely-nowhere-whatsoever hookup-relationship continue so long with a guy who she calls “the human vape pen.” Mackenzie at least has a couple of besties, Lucas (Jon Rudnitsky) and Ally (David) to confide in, and they all gripe about their dating struggles – but their marked lack of contrived meddling in Mackenzie’s personal life is a sign that this movie exists outside rom-com norms.

So it’s safe to say that Mackenzie is a bit emotionally vulnerable when she almost-cutely meets Finn (Nicholson) at Ally’s birthday party. He’s a TV news reporter with a big smile (you might say it’s distinctly Nicholsonian) and earnestness to match. They flirt and text and, in response to Mackenzie’s dislike for first dates in restaurants – she feels like everyone in the room recognizes a first date occurring in the vicinity and silently judges it – Finn reserves the entire eatery so they can dine alone. It’s a sweet gesture, and she’s charmed by it. Things move quickly: Their post-coital snuggling is epic. He buys them matching bracelets engraved with their initials. He declares his love for her on live TV at the site of a fatal car crash. It’s serious.

Four months go by. We’ve spotted a couple of red flags, but that’s just because we read the one-line plot summary; Mackenzie has no such luxury. Now she can’t focus on her law-school lectures because Finn threatens to kill himself if she doesn’t reply immediately to his text messages. We hear a snatch of kitschy horror-soundtrack music as his gaslighting and manipulation ramps up, and soon enough, Mackenzie thinks she’s the problem when Finn feels betrayed by her desire to go out for dinner with her friends for a couple hours. He twists her every word and action into an affront to his emotional well-being – then the next day apologizes profusely and fills her apartment with fresh flowers. He never lays a hand on her but smashes things and threatens self-harm and tells her “my therapist thinks you’re a bad girlfriend.” And before you know it, Mackenzie can’t get through the day without experiencing trauma flashbacks to Finn’s tantrums. His mantra is “I love you forever,” and that increasingly sounds like a threat. 

What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: David’s exploration of neurotic relationships fits loosely on the evolutionary line from Woody Allen to Noah Baumbach to Lena Dunham. 

Performance Worth Watching: Black-D’Elia – who we apparently previously saw in Good Burger 2? – is a rock-solid comedic-dramatic foundation for the movie, but she’d definitely benefit from a stronger screenplay.

Memorable Dialogue: The movie makes a self-knowing nod to the genre it’s subverting when Mackenzie asks Finn, “You sure you’re real and not a 2004 Matthew McConaughey simulation?”

Sex and Skin: A couple of sexy moments, but no nudity.

Our Take: I Love You Forever is well-meaning in its attempt to find truth and humor in Millennial dating misadventures, but it’s too undercooked to be truly convincing. It describes itself in its tagline as “a subversive romantic comedy,” which is a difficult tapdance in an odd time signature, and it never quite nails the tone. David’s performance as the “wacky best friend” is the key to the film’s issues; she comes off like she’s puffing up so-so material – it hits sometimes, but the one-liners tend to feel forced – with an inflated level of confidence. She tries too hard to will the screenplay into functionality, when it needs another draft or two, and perhaps shows the seams of what’s likely budgetary limitations. 

The core issue is the Mackenzie character – there’s not much to her beyond vague insecurities and career goals. We get little insight into her thoughts and dreams, her family or background. It’s as if she’s waiting to define herself by the next romantic relationship she forges, which is perhaps a realistic and relatable error made by real-life 20somethings seeking to find themselves, but the character is a blank slate on which to project the horrors of psychological abuse. 

I can buy that Finn’s extreme behavior is plausible, but it feels forced and artificial – I couldn’t get past the idea that Nicholson was acting more than inhabiting a character, especially in comparison to Black-D’Elia’s ability to imbue Mackenzie with a subtle sense of weariness and desperation. Finn never comes to life as a character, and his actions become frustratingly repetitive. We’re left wondering if Finn is mentally ill and failing to acknowledge it in a healthy manner, but the film doesn’t interrogate the idea in an insightful manner. You can see the thematic goals David has in mind: Dating is hard, relationships are hard, and the drama is funneled through the Millennial experience of dating apps and their distinct POVs. But it lacks specificity. It illustrates a nightmarish scenario, and it’s easy to empathize with Mackenzie, but the story feels too generic to be meaningful. I Love You Forever functions with clarity, for sure, but subtlety? Not really.

Our Call: You have to admire the attempt to dramatize Millennial malaise, but I Love You Forever lacks depth, and just plain doesn’t work. SKIP IT.

John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.