Netflix’s too-prolific-for-its-own-good Generic-Title Valentine’s Day Rom-Com Production Line has churned out another widget in Love Forever, a Swedish outing about a wedding that goes deeply awry. Shocker, right? Movies about weddings that go on without a hitch can’t justify their own existence, so we end up with oh-no-not-the-meddling-in-laws movies like this one – although to be honest, there might be enough charm in this one to keep it afloat. I’ll let you know definitively here in a handful of paragraphs.
The Gist: Irony: Hanna (Matilda Kallstrom) is a therapist who just got done listening to a patient talk about how she regrets getting married, and then all of Hanna’s besties scoop her up and take her out for her bachelorette party (or, in the parlance of the translated-to-English script, “hen party”). She’s soon to marry Samuel (Charlie Gustaffson), a celebrity chef, on his parents’ rustic farm on the island of Gotland. They want a small, intimate wedding. Hanna has her dress and a checklist of everything that needs to happen on the special day. They’ll travel to the island on Friday, there’ll be a ceremonial Meeting of the Parents because the moms and dads haven’t met yet, they’ll have only their very closest friends in attendance and nothing will go wrong and then they’ll skip off into the sunset and live happily ever after. That’s always how things work with weddings, especially in movies!
But, as the guy once said, if only ’twere so simple. It is hereby established: Hanna’s father Martin (Kjell Bergqvist) is an arrogant and judgmental asswipe of a stockbroker who doesn’t like anything, especially Samuel, and her mother Helene (Anja Lundqvist) has been patient with him for decades longer than he deserves. Samuel’s bestie Marco (Samuel Astor) will be there, as will Hanna’s bestie Linda (Doreen Ndagire), but that’s awkward, because Marco and Linda had a nasty breakup. Linda will be bringing Jacob (Ivar Forsling), a junior stockbroker who yearns to be Martin’s lickspittle, as her date. Martin and Helene change plans at the last minute and won’t show up until Saturday now, because Martin has Very Important Work Meetings to attend, and also probably because he’s prejudged Gotland as being nothing but hayseeds and sheepshit. Considering all this, CHAOS will inevitably REIGN.
But, as the guy once said, you ain’t seen nothing yet. Samuel and Hanna arrive on the island and his parents, Maj-Gun (Babben Larssen) and Leif (Claes Malmberg) are big sweet huggable lovable teddy bears who passive-aggressively begin taking over the wedding because this is tradition and that is tradition and, oh, that other thing over there, that’s tradition too. The first assault is via Maj-Gun, who very politely insists that Hanna wear an heirloom wedding dress that makes Laura Ingalls look like Charlotte the Harlot. Then the officiant breaks his leg and can’t marry them. Then Maj-Gun and Leif invite the entire town to the ceremony. Then Martin and Helene show up – in a rental car with no brakes, ho ho – so Martin can insult every pastoral yokel within earshot. Linda and Jacob and Marco arrive, and make everything awkward. Hanna accuses Samuel of being a surrender monkey who won’t stand up to his parents so they can have their wedding how she wants it. And then the entire congregation stands quietly and watches while an elderly couple voluntarily leaps off a cliff to their gruesome and bloody deaths. No! I’m getting confused with another movie set in Sweden. I guess things are crazy enough in this one already.
What Movies Will It Remind You Of?: Love Forever is like Midsommar (but not really) crossed with any bog-standard wedding comedy you can think of – My Big Fat Greek Wedding, The Wedding Planner, My Best Friend’s Wedding, Wedding Crashers, etc.
Performance Worth Watching: I dunno. The screenplay doesn’t give anyone anything particularly interesting to do, so I guess Bergkvist stands out by being such a cretin, I wanted to climb into the screen and sock him one on the nose.
Memorable Dialogue: Things are getting tense:
Samuel: Okay, things didn’t turn out the way we planned, but can’t we try to enjoy the day anyway?
Hanna: Yeah. You’re right.
Samuel. Yes. Let’s do that.
Hanna: I just have to make sure it turns out the way I want at my next wedding.
Sex and Skin: None.
Our Take: Ah, yes. The old best-laid-plans frustration plot, where we want to climb into the screen and sock the in-laws in the nose and then grab the bride and groom by the lapels and bopple them around until they grow spines and stand up for their damn selves. Credit Love Forever writer/director Staffan Lindberg for dialing back on the wacky and making this bromidic drivel mostly plausible (I’ve seen way too many wedding comedies lean heavy on animal antics, bodily fluids and/or people falling fully clothed into pools), but I gotta ding the movie for giving us nothing particularly compelling to look at, laugh at or listen to. It has all the hallmarks of a generically titled, algorithm-driven Netflix movie that demands nothing from us beyond pressing the play button.
To be fair, the cast Lindberg assembles is genial, and we can’t criticize the actors for not feeling particularly driven to elevate the material. They make it work to the best of its low-ambition capacity. The story is very much the usual stuff, including a two-pronged break-up-and-make-up plot, a straight-up break-up subplot and a recurring joke about ambulances showing up at the wedding (oh noes!). Be grateful we don’t have to gut out any predictable needle-drops and/or a celebratory dance-party conclusion, although it does indulge a few outtakes during the end credits. Can true love conquer all this bullshit? Theoretically, but then again, we already knew that, and don’t really need to be reminded again.
Our Call: Love Forever is nice enough at times, but it’s a wallpaper movie that doesn’t reward anyone’s devoted attention. SKIP IT.
John Serba is a freelance writer and film critic based in Grand Rapids, Michigan.
