The net-verse is divided over Voicemails For Isabelle—is it romantic or creepy?
Leah McKendrick’s repurposing of classic romcoms like The Shop Around the Corner and its upgrade You’ve Got Mail in which love comes before even a first date, uses today’s medium of personal communication – the cellular voicemail.
The two main leads do have a screw or two loose so they seem made for each other. Jill (Zoey Deutch) is unhealthily obsessed with her sister Isabelle (Ciara Bravo), whose illness leaves her housebound. For some reasons the women refer to each other as “dude”, “brother” or “my lad” as they exchange intimate confidences.
Jill works with a tyrannical baker, Chef Bastian (Nick Offerman) in San Francisco. He delights in insulting the apprentice chefs, particularly the women. If Jill is unhappy at work, her dating life is a disaster. When her sister dies, she loses that precious connection, and spends most evenings sitting on a park bench, leaving whiny or funny voicemails on Isabelle’s phone.
She is unaware that the number has been reassigned to a realtor, Wes (Nick Robinson), who lives in her Texan hometown. His dating life is pretty sad too, so he is entertained by Jill’s voicemails. He is unable to tell her that she is calling the wrong person, because without understanding it himself, he has fallen in love with her.
Wes manoeuvres a business trip to San Francisco so that he can meet Jill. He plans to run into her by chance at her favourite bench. Even though Jill—after humiliating encounters with her previous dates—declares she is “boy sober,” the two of them hit it off. Of course, Wes already knows her likes, dislikes and vulnerabilities, and if he were less decent or sincere, it would seem like entrapment.
Wes invites her to the wedding of his cousin Andy (Harry Shum,. Jr) and Breeda (played by the director Leah McKendrick)—both of whom want him to come clean. Jill does discover the truth accidentally, and walks off in a huff, saying she doesn’t need a man, but wants her sister back!
Her rage drives her over the edge at work, and she walks out of the toxic place to set up her own food truck, aided by another one of Bastian’s victims, Zella (Megan Danso).
It is not a genre-bending romcom, so the universe and the newlyweds conspire to get the moping twosome together, on New Year’s eve. There is the mandatory running through traffic in the rain sequence for Wes to reunite with Jill—no train or airport pursuit, mercifully.
Zoey Deutch is not a classic beauty, but she has an energetic charm, even though she is made to speak her lines in that high pitched shrieky voice that directors seem to think is youthful and cute. Nick Robinson is the calm counterweight to Deutch’s hyper-ness. The film is as much about coping with grief as looking for love, which is what makes it slightly superior to the regular formula-driven streaming fare
Voicemails For Isabelle
Directed by Leah McKendrik
Cast : Zoey Deutch, Nick Robinson, Lukas Gage, Nick Offerman, and others
On Netflix