Ah, what a nice sentiment, but is it a good movie? This dramatic comedy, which debuted on HBO on Saturday, July 19 and on HBO Max the night prior, is a movie with not a lot of details about it, but healthy critiques across the board. It is a dark comedy distributed by a recent production company named Utopia, and written & directed by Cazzie David and Eliza Kalani. Perhaps more recognizable are who stars in it, Sofia Black-D’Elia and Ray Nicholson.
By the movie’s title, you’d think it is a romance, all sweet and uplifting, but it is not. It is darker than that. It is described as a subversive romantic comedy gone wrong that follows a young woman into and out of an emotionally abusive relationship. RT sums it up this way – The current dating landscape is bleak at best, and no one is more aware of this than Mackenzie, a disillusioned 25-year-old law student whose love life consists of non-committal hookups and situationships from hell. When she has a “real life meet-cute” with Finn, a handsome and charming journalist, she starts to believe true love may actually exist. However, when the honeymoon phase wanes and the cracks begin to show, Mackenzie is forced to come to terms with whether or not she is to blame or if her love is actually too good to be true.Black-D’Elia (Ben-Hur, Single Drunk Female) is Mackenzie and Nicholson (Panic, Novocaine) plays Finn. Also to be seen are Jon Rudnitsky (SNL, The Red One) as Lucas, Oliver Cooper (Valley of the Boom) as Harrison and Cazzie David herself as Ally.
To be truthful, not too many critics took the time to see this picture that first appeared at South by Southwest in March of 2024. It took some effort to get picked up by a distributor, but Utopia did and had it on US screens by February of this year. For those who saw it and remarked on it, it was found to be favorable. FilmWeek said, “A really cool comedy that becomes something totally different, and that shift in tone is really impressive.” RogerEbert.com remarked, “It’s a level-headed portrait of a more everyday sort of misery: a relationship that becomes low-key hellish pretty early on and keeps getting incrementally worse.” IndieWire stated, “Mackenzie may need a minute to get back on her feet, but “I Love You Forever” serves as a tangible outlet for people to point to and say “I experienced this, please help.” And for that, we love the film forever.”
If you, the discerning HBO viewer, is at all curious about how this toxic relationship comes to be and how it is resolved, then seek it out across HBO’s channels or find it at HBO Max.
