Waste of time of the viewers, but also of the cast and crew.
Let's start with the characters. The background ones - flat like a piece of paper. They have names, I just can't be bothered to remember them, cause what for? They're all so stupid that they consider every word of Asli and Kerem to be gospel truth, no matter how moronic and how juvenile. And I'm not kidding. One of Asli's friends even makes notes. The main characters? By all means, let me start with Asli played by Demet. Asli is a rude, heartless, arrogant witch. That's in short. She plays with people's feelings, looks down on her friends, thinks herself all knowing in matters of love and men and considers herself a God's gift to humanity. Her style could be equated to "a bomb exploded in the second-hand and this is what dropped on me". Now, Kerem played by Sukru. He's childish (it's my campaign! - seriously, I was just waiting for him to stomp his feet like a 4yo), arrogant and completely... forgettable. He's so unlikable that they had to give him "sad" back story to make him tolerable - more on that later.
Now, the plot. Take "How to Lose a Guy...", a few scenes from "Ugly Truth", one or two from "Bay Yanlis", "Erkenci Kus" and "Sen Cal Kapimi" and probably a few others my mind just blocked due to the cringe factor and voila - you pretty much have this film.
Disclaimer: If you wanna skip the plot, just go to the last paragraph.
It starts when a blog reader throws Asli a challenge and she agrees to make a man fall in love with her to prove her methods work. Meanwhile Kerem's client is given to his colleague and he agrees to give him back only when Kerem makes a girl fall for him. So Asli picks a dress, spewing nonsense how men stop developing on the level of potty training and Kerem picks a watch saying that he is now the product he is going to sell to women. There are easier ways to do that than bets, but to each their own, I guess.
Of course they meet in the bar/pub/club/cafe (?) and immediately decide "that's the victim/mark" (lovely people, really) and so the games begin.
Fast forward a bit, cause nothing interesting happens (she changes clothes, he changes clothes) and then they meet again when they get in the same cab on a rainy evening. She insults him, he treats her like a moron and thus the great love is born? Seriously, don't expect any logic here. Then we go to Cappadocia, which is breathtaking. Unfortunately along with the views we're getting a sleezy, creepy amca vel. Uncle, who is like a hundred years old, but doesn't look a year over five hundred and who is more than willing to get into Asli's pants. And Asli, "smart" girl that she is, decides to make Kerem jealous leading amca on. Not gonna lie, had to grab a drink here, cause it felt ugh. But do not worry, cause to Kerem's aide comes amca's equally sleezy daughter, who already had him for one night and apparently was impressed and wants more. So amca harasses Asli, his daughter harasses Kerem and haha, sexual harassment is so funny. :/ Asli and Kerem get them drunk and run away. And this is where we learn that Kerem was born here, his daddy died and his mommy left when he was ten. You know, the all time fool-proof way of soliciting compassion for the character that represents nothing good. It's the laziest way of making a character even remotely likable and here, sorry to say, it failed. Not for Asli, though, who, from now on, looks at Kerem with eyes that were supposed to be puppy-eyes, but came out more like "I'm so freakin' high I've no idea where I am".
And here we come to the hot-air balloon flight and something that can only be described as the "fog horn sequence". Turns out Asli has a phobia (space or heights - don't remember, don't care) and so she screams in fear. I am not exaggerating when I say my dog jumped up and ran to another room and the birds on the trees by my window just flew away. I had to mute the audio for a moment. Suddenly I felt like I was dropped into slap-stick comedy, which was neither here nor there. But hey, not to worry, because Kerem will fix her phobia by telling her to not be afraid. Ugh... If only it worked with my arachnophobia, I'd move to Australia years ago. Anyway, fast forward and Kerem asks her to dinner. In his home. He'd cook. And she agrees so hurray, sexy time is coming. But first Asli will get herself drunk, Kerem will play "Breakfast at Tiffany's" for them to watch in the garden and turn on the sprinklers so that their first kiss was "in the rain". (Bartender, bourbon, and make it a double) It may sound romantic - it's not. The reason? Complete lack of chemistry between the characters. Peanut butter and jelly have more sparks than those two. Anyway, moving on. Nothing interesting to see here. After sexy times both Asli and Kerem admit they're in love but behold - the obligatory conflict before the happy ending - a must in any respected rom-com. Asli learns that Kerem slept with her friend and ghosted her, so she decides to finish what she started and humiliate him on her blog. They meet, she secretly live-streams his love confession to the world, tells him it was all fake and leaves. Sad song in the background tells me I'm supposed to cry here, but I'm not nearly intoxicated enough for this.
Allow me, please, to jump ahead again, because this is way too long already, and I'm still not done. Anyways, Asli realizes what a colossal moron she's been and writes on her blog that she's in love. Kerem reads it while he's already on the plane to London with the daughter of the sleezy amca. We get the worst airport sequence I have ever seen in any rom-com and Asli and Kerem finally meet. They're arrested by the airport security and THE END Oh, you think I rushed through this ending? That's cause it was rushed. There was no proper conversation and Asli's apology was a "by the way..." kind of thing. I really dislike those people.
Uff... I would love to send a fruit basket to the script writer and beg them never ever to write a rom-com again. EVER. Don't get me wrong, I don't expect rom-coms to be groundbreaking cinema, I am more than happy to embrace all the tropes of the genre. I even welcome them when they're done well. But this was not the case. The director could've made a really fun, feel-good movie, if they didn't take themselves so seriously and, of course, if there was any chemistry between the actors. This was my first encounter with Sukru, so I don't really have a comparison, but I have seen Demet in a few things before and all I can say is: What happened? The girl used to be good in comedy, so why is this such a dumpster fire? The tears are forced, the laughs are even worse, the puppy-eyes were left somewhere in the past and taken over by "I'm so high I have to duck to not get hit by ISS". It's also infuriating how all those stereotypes about genders are still so pushed to the front. I honestly thought we evolved beyond that and left it somewhere in the nineties. Anyway, thank you for your time. I assure you, however long this review, the movie is much longer and at much less funny. Cheers!
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