MOVIE REVIEW: Voicemails for Isabelle ~ FILMYWAPAS

Images courtesy of Netflix and Sony Pictures

VOICEMAILS FOR ISABELLE— 3 STARS

At around the two-thirds mark of Voicemails for Isabelle, the love interest, Wes, played by Nick Robinson (all grown up from Jurassic World and Love, Simon), gets a long-awaited chance to give a Best Man speech at a wedding for two of his closest friends, Andy and Breeda (former Glee star Harry Shum, Jr., and Scrambled’s Leah McKendrick, the writer and director calling her own number). In speaking from his nervous heart to complement the journey from the initial kismet that brought them together, he drops a heartfelt clincher of a line in closing, saying:

“Sometimes life rigs things in our favor.”

At face value, it’s a heart-melting acknowledgement of fate, karma, or whatever flavor of serendipity you subscribe to most. With his eye contact, Wes is not only toasting the newlyweds, but also coming to terms with the growing love he feels for his date, Jill, the movie’s lead, played by Zoey Deutch of Nouvelle Vague. The moment is working on both fronts, as damp corners of eyes and satisfied smiles blend to fill the screen. However, the verb “rig” is the tricky part.

LESSON #1: WHO OR WHAT IS DOING THE RIGGING?— At this point of Voicemails for Isabelle, viewers are at the peak of dramatic irony. They have witnessed a great deal of relationship rigging not orchestrated by an unseen higher power, and the weight of it on Wes and Jill is about to crack. In this big moment, we likely want our beautiful people who are right for each other to be together, but the question of how much manipulation is acceptable, or if enough good intentions are in action, instead of bad ones, looms.

One has to keep in mind that Leah McKendrick’s film is a romantic comedy, meaning, according to even the most refined and reinvented versions of the genre’s formula, a sticking point born from preventable mistakes or an unwashed Big Lie likely exists. In the case of Voicemails from Isabelle, the finagling of fate—from the initial Meet Cute to this wedding date peak—belongs to Wes. Like many rom-coms, a horses-holding “Let me explain” is needed.

See, several months ago, Jill’s sister, Isabelle (Ciara Bravo of Cherry), succumbed to her long battle with terminal cancer. Shown in great detail during the first half of Voicemails for Isabelle, the two sisters were inseparable kindred spirits of female independence since childhood, granting each other the strong and adorable pet names of “my lad” and “my dude.” Even though Isabelle was commonly bedridden, she was Jill’s biggest supportive cheerleader, especially when Jill moved from Austin to San Francisco to chase her culinary dreams to become a chef and restaurateur. Phone calls and voicemails became their best way to keep in touch.

Even after her passing, Jill continues to listen to old saved voicemails from Isabelle for reminiscence and encouragement. She also leaves her new ones, updating her life’s trials and tribulations surrounding work and love. And, here’s the rub.

Isabelle’s phone number has been reassigned to Wes’s new work phone, and Jill doesn’t know that. Instead of Jill’s roller coaster messages of highs and lows being sent into the digital void, they are being saved—and heard—by Wes. After absorbing them as little surprises of random entertainment, Wes becomes empathetic and enamored by the emotional outpouring he’s hearing. After some social media research, he tracks Jill down and heads to San Francisco for work, determined to meet her.

LESSON #2: CREEPER ALERT!— It’s with this dialed rotation of risk in the premise of Voicemails for Isabelle that a “creeper alert” will be—and must be—sounded and measured by the audience watching this from their Netflix couches. When you stop and think about it, Wes is selfishly and advantageously maneuvering the romance in a parasocial relationship. Are you as cool with that as you were Meg Ryan’s radio show-listening character was tracking down Tom Hanks’s widower in Sleepless in Seattle from the other side of the country? Were you cool with it when the shoe was on the other foot when Hanks’s chat room crush knew Ryan’s true identity before the end of You’ve Got Mail? Admittedly, shady horror movies could be built with the same nuts and bolts.

Voicemails for Isabelle verbally acknowledges and bows before both of those Nora Ephron classics and uses the same salve to solve the creeper problem of its own movie. That cinematic medication is undeniable chemistry. When Wes and Jill finally meet, the charismatic magic overflows and takes over the film, just as it should in a proper romantic comedy. The blending of her unfiltered vitality and his soulful compassion—channeled by committed and highly attractive performances from Zoey Deutch and Nick Robinson—amasses all the appeal necessary to get over the lies being led.

LESSON #3: LIVING VICARIOUSLY THROUGH OTHERS— That conceit is successful because Voicemails for Isabelle’s central theme of living vicariously through others rings true across many threads of Leah McKendrick’s expansive plot. For years, Jill extended her experiences of joy to her sister, while Isabelle’s unwavering hope at home echoed back to Jill. In hearing those voicemails and now being around Jill herself, Nick improves his psyche behind his “sad boy deadly eyes,” and that rubs off on Jill’s process of coping. Whether it's family members, close friends, or supportive romantic partners, folks need those inspirational sources in their lives for emulation until they can express a little of their own. That counts as a nice touch here to further massage the potentially problematic roots.

With this sprightliness at work, Voicemails for Isabelle beams a wonderful energy for the sorely underserved date night crowd, lifted greatly by a stellar and busy tracklist, ranging from a pair of Millennial landmarks by Robyn to a trio of Taylor Swift songs and plenty of peppy pop in between. If anything, the movie is a shade too long for a rom-com, where the side plots of a failed dating romance to a hot Brit podcaster (former track star and model Toby Sandeman) and Jill’s exhausting restaurant life working under Nick Offerman’s hammy Chef Bastien and one-night-stand co-worker mistake of Arthur (played by The White Lotus and Euphoria hunk Lukas Gage) steal some mojo from where it matters more and better elsewhere. Even so, by rightly shoving patriarchal leanings out of the way, this is Zoey Deutch’s show, and she commands the narrative. Nothing goes without her. If she and McKendrick are doing the rigging, we’re in.