“So what’s the whole story?” someone asks early in “Charlie Harper,” a gently appealing romance from debut directors Mac Eldridge and Tom Dean. If the answer they come up with isn’t exactly unexpected, the path they take in getting there does feel fully sincere.
Charlie (Nick Robinson, “Maid”) meets Harper (Emilia Jones, “CODA”) in a high school English class, and they fall for each other instantly. But he’s a year older, and despite some flirting—via carefully-chosen CD mixes, because it’s 2008—they don’t really connect until after she graduates.
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Their first night together, he reads her Frank O’Hara’s poem “Having a Coke with You,” as Paul Leonard-Morgan’s emotional score swells behind them. Who could resist? Soon there are kisses in the rain, sun-dappled park outings and quiet moments home alone. Before long they’re moving from Florida to New Orleans, so she can achieve her dream of becoming a world-class chef. But nothing quite goes as planned once they arrive, and neither truly understands why.
Dean’s script scrambles the tale, jumping back and forth so we’re not stuck on a blandly predicable downward route. He makes sure to show us both perspectives with equal respect—a too-rare approach in this genre–and his likable stars lean in to their assignments.
Jones plays Harper as a practical romantic, simultaneously frustrated and confused about the ways her once-perfect boyfriend expresses his own lack of confidence. Robinson’s Charlie is disarming and vulnerable, offering reasonable resistance against someone who wants more than he’s capable of giving.
Charlie likes his modest job printing t-shirts, and he’s happier without the grand ambitions that ignite his girlfriend. Or so he insists, every time she nudges him toward something new. But the stubborn stasis in other aspects of his life—not to mention all those water bottles secretly filled with vodka—do tell a different story.
That story, it must be said, is not especially original. And it certainly doesn’t help that both the nonlinear approach and Jones’ resemblance to Zooey Deschanel so noticeably evoke the thematically similar (and creatively superior) “(500) Days of Summer.”
But not every movie has to break the mold. Some romances just need to touch on a universal experience in a way that’s engaging and warm. “Charlie Harper” is that kind of movie, and anyone nursing a broken heart—or, for that matter, anyone who can still remember having one–will surely appreciate the sweetness that underlies its young characters’ tentative sentimentality.
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