2023 Movie
Dir. Evren Karabıyık Günaydın & Murat Saraçoğlu · Turkey · Turkish
Attractive stars and a cute premise don't make up for this romcom's lack of stakes and dramatic tension
Seemingly engineered in a lab to appeal strictly to romantic comedy enthusiasts who are familiar with every trope, Make Me Believe is charming and enjoyable in the moment, but ultimately does little with its ingredients. The things that it gets right are pretty foolproof: beautiful Turkish locales, steamy PG-rated romance, and a good dose of humor from supporting characters who can see the spark of love even before the couple does. Unfortunately this is all window dressing for a story built on flimsy foundations. The protagonist’s assignment to book an interview doesn’t actually carry that much weight, which makes the risk of pursuing and/or seemingly betraying her childhood neighbor feel inconsequential. And when these two characters inevitably meet in the middle, their connection is unconvincing, draining the excitement out of everything that follows.
Two meddling grannies trick their adult grandkids into a meet-cute that reignites a childhood crush and old grudges.
A journalist discovers that the elusive photographer she hopes to interview is her childhood enemy and next-door-neighbor, whom their respective grandmothers are trying to set her up with.
The two grandmothers (played by Zerrin Sümer and Yildiz Kültür) who try to push their respective grandkids together are so much cuter and more interesting than this film deserves. It feels like there's a whole other film's worth of material in their mischievous schemes and innate youthfulness. It's a shame, then, that Make Me Believe consigns them to the background, never allowing them to become deeper characters—to the point that they just straight-up vanish throughout the second half of the film. In another world, we'd be getting an equally fun movie centered on how these two elderly ladies just want their grandkids to be friends again.
What did journalism ever do to become the default profession in these disposable romcoms?
Emil Hofileña is a curator at A Good Movie to Watch. He also writes as a theater critic, with work published in Rogue and Out of Print, among others. He’s probably crying over a movie or an episode as we speak.
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