‘Which Brings Me to You’ Review — Lucy Hale and Nat Wolff Deserve Better

The Big Picture

• Lucy Hale and Nat Wolff have fantastic chemistry in Which Brings Me to You.
• The initial setup and premise are interesting, and a solid basis for a love story.
• The structure of the story can feel repetitive in how it explores their past relationships.

In an era where romance as a genre is more popular than ever, the resurgence of the rom-com should be a no-brainer. The Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney-led Anyone But You surprisingly proved to be a sleeper hit despite mixed critical reviews, and Netflix practically runs a cottage industry for rom-coms of the seasonal and non-seasonal variety. Hoping to join the ranks of the modern rom-com is Which Brings Me To You, starring Lucy Hale — a perennial presence in contemporary romantic comedies — and Nat Wolff as two people with messy romantic pasts who get to know each other over 24 hours after a failed hook-up. Though the premise is cute and clever, in execution, the film winds up getting bogged down in its story, not allowing Hale and Wolff’s considerable chemistry to really shine through.

What Is ‘Which Brings Me To You’ About?

Set in the extremely fictional universe where attractive single people go to weddings and actually manage to meet other attractive single people, and aren’t just stuck at the singles table made up of widowed aunties and assorted random people they didn’t have a spot for — not that I’m speaking from experience — Which Brings Me To You follows Jane (Hale) and Will (Wolff), two guests at a mutual friends wedding who decide to blow off some steam by hooking up in the coat closet. When Will brings things to an abrupt halt, Jane storms off, embarrassed, and Will follows, not wanting to leave her alone since she’s had a few drinks.

What follows is the pair spending the next 24 hours together, away from the chaos of the wedding, as they get to know each other better. In trying to figure out why it is they struggled to have a successful hookup, the two wind up sharing their troubled romantic pasts with one another in a series of lengthy flashbacks that place both the storyteller and the listener in the heart of the action. It’s a clever storytelling device especially considering how, without it, our romantic leads would have spent the bulk of the movie not only romantically apart, but physically apart as well. However, as cleverly as this is shot, it also winds up being the film’s biggest hurdle, one it doesn’t always manage to clear.

‘Which Brings Me To You’ Does Too Much and Not Enough at the Same Time

The bulk of the movie is taken up with these flashbacks, which alternately follow Jane or Will into one of their past relationships, and allow them, in telling the story to someone else, to reflect on what went wrong in the past. However, in spending this much time on relationships that are not the ones we’re meant to be rooting for and watching blossom, we wind up missing out on what makes Jane and Will click as prospective partners. As it stands in Which Brings Me To You, the only thing they really have in common is their past relationships never really worked out. Though even that feels uneven since Will plays an active role in things not going well, whereas Jane is more a victim of bad circumstance, something that also comes into play in the film’s very rushed climax, and stops the ending from being as satisfying as it could have been.

As it stands, devoting this much time to conversation and flashback does strange things to the film’s pacing. They alternate sharing their stories, which gradually grow more and more serious, but because the format never changes, it never feels as though things really heighten. This means that by the time we get to the “third act breakup,” coming in hot in the last 10 minutes of the movie, it’s over as quickly as it began, and there’s never any real sense of them losing something significant. That’s not to say that this format couldn’t work at all. But this story told in this way feels far better suited to a limited TV series, where each episode could alternately follow one flashback, and one encounter between Jane and Will in the present day, thematically linking the two, and more evenly distributing the amount of time we see them apart and together. This also would have benefited the story overall, purely for the tender, understated chemistry Hale and Wolff bring to the screen.

Lucy Hale and Nat Wolff’s Chemistry Saves ‘Which Brings Me To You’

It’s not all hopeless though: Hale is perfectly cast as the dry-witted leading lady, with just enough hope peeking through her jaded exterior that you want to root for her to find her happily ever after. She’s wasted in this era, when it’s clear she would have been right at home in the 2000s rom-com heyday. For his part, Wolff is a tall, slightly dorky leading man, and a proud graduate of the “Adam Driver School of Kissing With Your Whole Body,” which together are a devastatingly swoony combo. Both separately and together, the pair bring something special to Which Brings Me To You, which makes it such a shame that the script didn’t better serve that.

Rom-coms — and romance novels, even — are built on two things: the premise, and the characters. Yes, every story requires this, but these are so especially important in the romance genre, regardless of medium, because the ending of the story is a foregone conclusion. You start the story knowing it will end with the couple together, so it’s the how that keeps you engaged. In trying to subvert the rom-com, by either bypassing familiar beats or watering them down to the point where they become a shadow of themselves, Which Brings Me To You squanders the opportunities presented by a unique premise and leads with genuine chemistry.

Which Brings Me To You premieres in theaters in the U.S. on January 19. Click below for showtimes.

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