All of You Parent Guide

Simon (Brett Goldstein) and his best friend, Laura (Imogen Poots) have always been close, but now that all of their college buddies have paired up and moved on, they’ve come to rely on one another. Things change when Laura decides to take The Test – a groundbreaking analysis which promises to find a person’s soulmate – and matches with Lukas (Steven Cree). She and Lukas move in together, and Simon starts seeing Andrea (Zawe Ashton), but Simon and Laura start to wonder if The Test is all its cracked up to be…

Despite its somewhat melancholy themes of missed opportunity and regret, All of You is surprisingly funny. The banter between the well-cast leads is a nice counterpoint to the general malaise infecting the rest of the story, and the film is smart enough to lead with that – but this isn’t a romantic comedy. It’s a drama, so don’t go getting your hopes up. There’s tragedy around every corner.

I feel obliged to warn you that All of You isn’t the best choice for date night. I don’t think a film focusing on people regretting their romantic choices and (spoiler alert) cheating on their partners is not a prime choice to watch with your significant other. It is, likewise, a bad choice for families – nudity, sex, profanity, drinking, smoking, and drug use round out the experience.

There isn’t actually much else I can say about the story. Part of the reason the movie works is a creative approach to time, and it’s hard to convey in written form the slick little jumps the movie makes between scenes, forcing the audience to do a little catching up every time and allowing the script to focus on the parts of the story that are the most impactful, rather than dragging along between bland bits of narrative connective tissue.

Brett Goldenstein and Imogen Poots are both a treat, even if their characters are frequently infuriating, and the interesting angle on a simple story make this an intriguing little mess. Romantic dramas aren’t usually in my wheelhouse for casual viewing so I was pleasantly surprised that I had a half decent time – your mileage may vary.

About author

Keith Hawkes

Keith Hawkes graduated from Mount Royal University, Calgary, Canada with a degree in English and History. His interests are movies, American literature, science fiction, almost every kind of music, and museums. He enjoys criticizing films for fun - although he's okay with being paid for it.