This Netflix movie tells the story of aspiring musician Cassie Salazar (Sofia Carson) who agrees to a marriage of convenience with Marine Luke Morrow (Nicholas Galitzine) to receive military benefits. Eventually, the distinctions between a charade and real emotions begin to fade as they fall in love.
I didn't like this movie; I thought it was a terrible Netflix attempt to stay relevant within the genre of young adult romances. First, the characters were not written well. Cassie is the embodiment of a cringey feminist, who wears t-shirts that say "The Future Is Female" and whose social awareness is just embarassing to watch. She equates feminism to hating men and independence with despising love. Luke is a misogynist and contributes to all the terrible rhetoric of the American military system. He's another bad boy with a difficult past, and honestly, he's easily forgettable.
Now, onto the awful plotlines. Cassie is the frontwoman of a band, a group of characters we never learn about despite them adding relative significance to the plot. They perform at the bar where Cassie waitresses one minute, and in the next they're suddenly headlining famous festivals with no explanation of their evolution. The band was very clearly only used to further Cassie's character background and do little else. If I was given more information about these characters, maybe I would've supported their success more but because they were all nameless I was so unattached to them.
I do think the leads had chemistry and their love story was believable, but that's where the positives stop for me. The entire personalities of these characters revolved around them being "broken", which would've been appealing to watch had the writing and development been better. Netflix was trying to create a movie with "indie" motifs (cue Cassie's artsy tattoos) but it failed. Can you tell I was disappointed with this movie?
