It may have been the perfect date, but it wasn’t the perfect movie

By Mallory J

Netflix has released yet another Original Movie starring teen heartthrob Noah Centineo. Centineo made his first prominent appearance in the movie adaptation of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before and will reprise his role in the sequel. Fans of the young adult’s acting may have been excited to find out that he was starring in yet another movie, The Perfect Date, alongside Austin & Ally actress Laura Marano. However, this movie was quick to fall short.

The main focus of this storyline was that Centineo’s character, Brooks Rattigan, creates an app where anyone can pay him to be a stand-in boyfriend for any occasion. Maurano’s character, Celia Lieberman, then hires him to be a stand-in in order to make a boy jealous. While the plot seemed interesting, it became disappointing when the plot became a typical teen romance movie that was boring in several areas, especially characters..

Character development was somewhat lacking as well. Rattigan was a very self-absorbed character that never really changed his ways nor did he notice when he did something wrong. He continually ditched his best friend (Odiseas Georgiadis), constantly lied about himself in order to make himself seem popular, and even lied his way into Yale. Lieberman, however, was the saving grace of this movie. Her sarcastic charm and witty banter with the rest of cast did have me chuckling quite a few times. But, this character was not enough to make up for the awful romance aspect.

This movie was a very typical teen drama. A boy likes the popular, said boy expectedly falls in love with a different girl, now the boy doesn’t know what to do. That’s basically the formula for how this movie was produced. Brooks likes Shelby, played by Camila Mendes, but is starting to have feelings for Celia. Go ahead and use your imagination on how the rest of this movie turned out.

All in all, this movie was a very typical, cheesy, romance movie. It had no plot, no character development, and was cringe-worthy at best. However, it will probably be perfect for those looking for a movie that has no backbone and holds the interest of a 12-year-old girl.