1413. Love Wrecked (2005)

Starring: Amanda Bynes, Chris Carmanck, Jonathan Bennett

Director: Randal Kleiser

Running Time: 87 mins

Love Wrecked is an American film about a woman working at a Caribbean resort where a popstar of whom she is a fan is staying. One night, the two have a mishap and fall overboard from a party cruise, ending up on a desert island alone together.

The title of this film alone is enough to make you cringe, and the rest is mostly just as you would expect from an early 2000s Amanda Bynes movie. I’ve definitely seen worse, and the film does deserve credit for some plot twists that surprised me, but the lasting impression I have of this film is that it’s an annoying teen rom-com with no good humour and very average performances.

Despite that, there is one thing about this film that I did like, and that was some of the plot twists. The story itself is by no means interesting, and at times completely preposterous, but there were at least three good moments where the film diverted massively from what I expected from the rom-com formula. The twists didn’t rectify the unconvincing story and romance, but I was very impressed to see that the writers at least tried to do something a little bit different than the typical generic plot.

Unfortunately, the majority of the film doesn’t try as hard to be different, and does in fact mean that Love Wrecked ends up as a very generic teen rom-com. One of the hallmarks of that genre, and one of the things I hated most about this movie, is an idiotic main character too lovestruck to think sensibly. Amanda Bynes is by no means my favourite actress, but I’ve seen her put in good enough performances to know that this isn’t entirely her fault.

Of course, she’s not mesmerising, but she does stand above her very average co-stars, and that means the fact that I was so infuriated by her character was more down to the personality she was given by the writers and director. Rather than making a likeable young woman who we could support as she ends up in a dream situation on a desert island with her favourite singer, everything she did was exceptionally irritating and selfish, and it meant that I had absolutely no reason to care about her, or anyone else’s, plight at any point.

Beyond that, the comedy in this film is extremely poor too. I don’t think I laughed at any of the jokes, and often struggled to recognise what was meant to be a joke, and that meant that the more annoying and dull aspects of the movie shone through. When there was a good opportunity for humour, the film more often goes for a situation that’s likely to make 13 year old girls faint, and leave the rest of us more irritated, and more bored by whatever idiocy is going on on screen.

I may not be its target audience, but I really didn’t like Love Wrecked. It’s a dull and cheesy teen rom-com with no good comedy, average performances and incredibly annoying characters. It did, however, manage to throw in three or so good plot twists that reinvigorated my interest for brief periods, and that’s why Love Wrecked gets a 4.9 from me.