Destiny has a plan.
2023-05-04
$9.0M
104 min
Mira Ray, dealing with the loss of her fiancé, John, sends a series of romantic texts to his old cell phone number… not realizing the number was reassigned to Rob Burns' new work phone. Rob, a journalist, is captivated by the honesty in the beautifully confessional texts. When he’s assigned to write a profile of megastar Céline Dion, he enlists her help in figuring out how to meet Mira in person and win her heart.
Now I don't know about you, but if I started to get text messages from an unknown number that were emotionally revealing in nature, I think that I would politely inform the sender that they'd got a wrong number! Not so here, when the rather hapless "Rob" (Sam Heughan) starts to get messages that certainly tweak his interest, and that of his colleagues "Lisa" (Lydia West) and "Billy" (Russell Tovey). He is able to glean enough from her texts to eventually engineer a meeting (at the opera) and is soon introduced to "Mira" (Priyanka Chopra Jonas) who is still reeling from the death of her previous boyfriend in an auto accident - hence why she still thinks she is talking to him when sending messages to his old, now reallocated, phone number! Meantime, "Rob" has been tasked with getting an in-depth interview with the soon-to-tour Celine Dion and after a rather shaky start at a press conference, she decides to help our dippy hero to sort out his rather curiously developing relationship. To be fair to Heughan, he's not your archetypal pretty boy in this film, but that's only of slight benefit as the plot lurches from ridiculous to absurd before concluding in the only way it could (just ninety minutes later than it needed to be). The soundtrack does offer us a chance to recall just how powerful Miss Dion's voice is, but her acting ought to be something she consigns to the back of her sock drawer pretty sharpish - a recommendation that could be made for pretty much the entire cast (and the pretty lame writing, too). The only redeeming scene, I felt anyway, featured an health-obsessed Nick Jonas as her date who, upon realising that he wasn't going to get laid, starts to look for an alternative partner with whom to burn off the carbs from the drinks - while they are still in the cab! Nothing at all to write home about here, it passes the time amiably and forgettably enough but definitely does not need the cinema experience.
