‘What’s Love Got to Do With It’ Review: Lily James Rom-Com Breathes New Life Into the Genre

Dating in the 21st century sucks. A wider array of choices means you don’t have to settle, but at the same time, this means some people aren’t particularly interested in settling down either. The ups and downs of a “modern” approach versus more traditional arranged marriage is at the heart of What’s Love Got to Do With It?, a film directed by Shekhar Kapur with a script from Jemima Khan, that is both a romance and a comedy that somehow manages to both lean into all the tropes of a rom-com while feeling like something else entirely.

The film follows childhood friends Zoe (Lily James), a documentary filmmaker, and Kaz (Shazad Latif), a doctor, as Kaz tells Zoe he’s asked his parents to arrange a marriage for him. While Zoe is initially surprised at his willingness to enter into a loveless marriage, Kaz maintains that the traditional approach offers more stability than organically meeting someone. Zoe proposes that Kaz and his family appear as the subjects of a new documentary, which chronicles couples in Britain that have had arranged marriages — highlighting the good, the bad and everything in between. She follows along as Kaz meets and eventually gets engaged to Maymouna (Sajal Aly), a law student from Pakistan. Also not making things easier in the slightest for either Kaz or Zoe: the unresolved feelings hovering in the air between them.

What makes the film so different from the rom-coms that have come before it is how quiet, and almost gentle it is. The tropes we all love are still there, of course. Childhood friends-to-lovers, a refusal to admit how they really feel, not seeing that what they’ve been looking for has been here the whole time. But What’s Love Got to Do With It? tackles all these points, as well as questions of culture, of gender, of parental expectations in so quiet a way it feels more slice-of-life than conventional rom-com. Gone are the over-the-top gestures, replaced instead with something that feels a lot more grounded and real.

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The film is primarily Zoe’s story, following her as she tries to excel in her professional capacity as an award-winning documentary filmmaker. Throughout, she really does seem the happiest looking at the world through her camera lens, because in that capacity, she can shape things however she wants them to be. This is in obvious contrast to her personal life, which she tries to keep a handle on, but which keeps slipping just out of grasp. Emma Thompson plays Zoe’s well-meaning, if a bit tactless, mother, who spends the bulk of the film trying to set her daughter up with someone, to Zoe’s frustration. The performances from both James and Thompson beautifully convey the frustrations of a thirty-something tired of parental interference, and a loving parent who desperately wants her child to understand the difference between independence and loneliness.

For his part, Kaz’s experience is one so many third-culture kids can relate to. Never quite local enough for the place you were born and raised, but also not quite in-step with your parents culture either. His pursuit of tradition in what he perceives to be a fairly modern, Western existence is met with surprise from Meymouna, who finds him much more old-fashioned than she was expecting.

That aspect is actually one of the film’s more interesting commentaries. A source of tension throughout between Kaz and Zoe is the noticeable absence of Kaz’s sister Jamila (Mariam Haque) from family settings, with the Khan family unwilling to go into much detail about the estrangement. The why of it all becomes increasingly apparent, but if the film has one major flaw it’s that it’s never quite willing to go there. Jamila has done something the family finds unforgivable, but it’s also hard to imagine that had one of the Khan boys done the same that the reaction would have been quite so extreme. Societal attitudes do not change overnight, nor do ingrained personal or familial beliefs, but that the film lands both on the idea that this is wrong, but also remains unwilling for anyone to verbally challenge old world assumptions (apart from Meymouna) is frustrating.

That’s a shame given how lovely the rest of it is, and how real the love story feels. The film foregoes the dramatic race to the altar, with one half of the eventual couple begging the other not to marry, instead treating Kaz and Zoe like the adults they are, trusting them with their decisions and leaving them to deal with the consequences of their actions. Their chemistry works, not because it’s the scorching kind that suggests they’ll burn fast and bright, but because it’s a simmer brought to a comfortable boil. It’s two people finding a partner, not a One True Love in the fairy-tale sense. As for the ultimate question of the film, marrying for love or for like, settling down vs. just settling, the film answers that in the same measured way it tackles everything else.

Despite its murkier hurdles, What’s Love Got to Do With It? is the kind of film that takes a mature approach to asking its own titular question by approaching things realistically with the good and the bad mixed together. It has humor and heart, and a cast dedicated to telling the story as authentically as possible, making it absolutely worth the watch for those looking for a bit more thoughtfulness in their rom-coms.

Rating: B+

What’s Love Got to Do With It hits theaters on May 5.