\n<\/p>\n
W<\/span>atching, or rather enduring, Amazon-MGM\u2019s charmless new romantic comedy Maintenance Required, I was so convinced it was an officially sanctioned re-imagining of You\u2019ve Got Mail that I scoured the credits for confirmation. Surely, even in this cursed AI era of copyright erosion, no one would so shamelessly regurgitate the beats of that much-adored film without giving the requisite credit?<\/p>\n But try as I might, I could not find a \u201cbased on\u201d or even a \u201cthanks to\u201d, the film a copy of a film which was itself a (legally sound) remake of a film which had been inspired by a play (the script even, cheekily, refers to \u201ca sweet little shop around the corner\u201d). In a film that will hopefully be used as evidence in an upcoming lawsuit, a woman tries to keep her struggling local business alive as a big-brand competitor opens over the street while she secretly chats to a man online who just so happens to be her business rival. Scene where he tells her to fight for what\u2019s hers, which leads her to a TV appearance? Check. Scene where he finds out who she really is as she waits for their first in-person date? Check. Ensuing scene where he shows up, doesn\u2019t tell her the truth, and she blasts him for being a corporate sellout? Check. Winning chemistry, sharp wit and a buoyantly romantic ending? Oh, wait.<\/p>\n Because as much as ChatGPT might be able to replicate the rough shape of a You\u2019ve Got Mail rip-off (the film is allegedly written by three<\/em> humans, Lacey Uhlemeyer, Roo Berry and Erin Falconer), it can\u2019t capture any of that film\u2019s humanity or even basic charm. The updates to the plot only make it that much worse \u2013 this time it\u2019s not duelling bookstores but rather mechanics, and instead of meeting in a 1998-suited AOL chatroom, now it\u2019s a Reddit forum for car enthusiasts \u2013 and only serve to show how ill-suited this particular story is for a more online age. There\u2019s really no reason for Riverdale alum and Strangers reboot survivor Madelaine Petsch\u2019s Charlie and British actor Jacob Scipio\u2019s Beau to delay an offline meet in this iteration other than her being vaguely uninterested in dating and him kinda sorta seeing a poorly defined Bad Woman.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n They share inane tidbits over fixing cars online (which are, yep, easier than fixing people<\/em>, apparently) and limply spar in person, but there\u2019s no warmth to the former and no bite to the latter. The plot has no real sense of incremental build, making it unclear just how Charlie\u2019s business is faring and what its collapse would truly mean to her (that sad crush one felt in You\u2019ve Got Mail, as long-held memories faded into corporate anonymity, never coming). Like the one smash-hit romcom everyone is desperate to replicate, 2023\u2019s Anyone But You (a film that did at least credit Shakespeare for the source material), casting is based less on likability and more on Instagram aesthetics, the two handsome actors looking well-styled and gym-trained but lacking any of the charisma sorely needed for the genre (Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan were always closer to cute than sexy). It\u2019s most jarring with Petsch, who is supposed to be playing a rough-and-ready mechanic who rolls her eyes at glamour (\u201cI much prefer wheels to heels,\u201d she says) but even when she\u2019s busy working on a car, she\u2019s as pristinely styled as an influencer posing with an Erewhon smoothie, with only the lightest grease stain carefully positioned on her forehead.<\/p>\n In a smarter script, there\u2019s something more to explore with the dynamics of the business feud, as a male-led conglomerate tries to crush a smaller female-led competitor in a field that doesn\u2019t typically allow for much gender diversity, but the film has nothing on its brain beyond car puns. It\u2019s also extremely hard to stomach the film\u2019s anti-gentrification, anti-capitalism stance when it\u2019s made in conjunction with the cartoonishly evil Amazon overlords and littered with product placement (a scene of the female mechanics raging against the system has one of them holding a bag of Smartfood white cheddar popcorn aimed toward the camera).<\/p>\n There\u2019s really nothing to see here, just another synthetic simulation of a film and a genre we used to love, less maintenance required and more complete overhaul.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Watching, or rather enduring, Amazon-MGM\u2019s charmless new romantic comedy Maintenance Required, I was so convinced it was an officially sanctioned re-imagining of You\u2019ve Got Mail that I scoured the credits for confirmation. Surely, even in this cursed AI era of copyright erosion, no one would so shamelessly regurgitate the beats of that much-adored film without<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":26961,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[2437,1930,7478,8092,16149,1085,16151,4897,16150,5931],"class_list":{"0":"post-26960","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-entertainment","8":"tag-amazons","9":"tag-films","10":"tag-mail","11":"tag-maintenance","12":"tag-required","13":"tag-review","14":"tag-ripoff","15":"tag-romance","16":"tag-synthetic","17":"tag-youve"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26960","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=26960"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26960\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/26961"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=26960"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=26960"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=26960"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}