The New Year’s kiss at midnight is a fun little tradition to share with your lover, but if you’re single, it’s just a reminder of your current relationship-less status. Of course, it’s not the end of the world if you can’t find someone by the 31st, but it’s this what-if, this hope, this deadline that drives the romantic stakes of In Search of a Midnight Kiss. It’s a cute premise, and leads Scoot McNairy and Sara Simmonds share real chemistry here, but the characterization made to introduce Wilson comes across as creepy rather than quirky more than a decade later. Even if the film reckons with that choice later on through Vivian’s reaction, it felt like that choice could have led to a more fruitful realization… Or at least, the idea that Wilson should consider making a change. (It’s the New Year, after all.) Still, In Search for a Midnight Kiss effectively captures how reaching out to someone new can be something good, even despite all the hurt you once felt.

The chemistry between the leads is what saves this film.