O Desenrolar do Amor (2025)

missing a spark

Have to preface that I don’t think my standards were set incredibly high coming into this — when you watch this type of romcom youth movie you pretty much know what you’re going to get, plot-wise. A movie like this is elevated on the strength of its cast.

That’s where this movie misses the mark. I just don’t feel like I was given enough to fall in love with these characters. I think the male lead was miscast and I didn’t feel chemistry between him and the female lead. The other love interest character was barely in it, and because of that it didn’t really make an impact when the FL chose the ML over him. It just felt like “okay yeah, duh.” This applies to the entire movie; the emotional gravitas was missing, or the “spark”.

A strength was the FL’s group of friends — I loved how they were always so supportive of her.

I liked that the FL was able to realise on her own that the ML always liked her for who she was, but the problem was after that realisation I felt like the movie was just floundering. The forced “ML had to leave” and “she tells him to go even though she loves him” but they meet again 1-2 years later in college story thread really didn’t need to be included. It felt tired and not well-paced.

Dunno what was the point of having the character of FL’s fraternal twin sister. She had like one line. I thought she would play a role in the story; you have a pair of fraternal twin sisters but one is prettier (this isn’t true ofc but ykwim) and achieves better grades, and there’s just no conflict arising from that?

Overall I think there’s way better 2000s nostalgia-bait youth romance movies. I think others did it better and this one just feels like a pale imitation, to be honest.

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