Three new movies about love: 'Love Hurts,' 'Heart Eyes' and 'Parthenope'

Some fools think of happiness/Blissfulness, togetherness/Some fools fool themselves, I guess/They're not foolin' me

Happy Valentine’s Day, one week early. In honor of the holiday, reviews of three films that touch on love and romance, all of which are out on Friday.

Love Hurts

Love Hurts feels a lot like it began life as an epic crime saga in the tradition of the John Wick movies, complete with years of complex mythology and lore. Then, a studio note at some point suggested that the filmmakers “keep all that, but make it romantic instead, so we can put it out at Valentine’s Day. Also, cut it down to 82 minutes.”

The result is a tonal mush that wastes a likable lead turn from Ke Huy Quan, as well as some quality fight choreography.

Love Hurts has the same premise as roughly half the star vehicles that debut on Netflix each year: the protagonist, a normal person with a normal family/job, turns out to have a secret past as a spy/assassin, which they must suddenly revisit.

This time, it’s Marvin Gable (Quan), a Milwaukee realtor who, in a previous life, was a hitman for the criminal organization led by his brother (Daniel Wu.) When he’s visited at his real estate office by a hitman (Mustafa Shakir), he’s drawn back in, especially by the mob firm’s ex-lawyer Rose (fellow recent Oscar winner Ariana DeBose), his sometime lover.

So we have this crime film, complete with a half-dozen creatively blocked fight scenes that are firmly John Wick-like; David Leitch is listed as a producer. There are also several different criminal henchman characters, all with complex backstories and loyalties. Roughly half the film is taken up with long paragraphs of expository dialogue, explaining all the characters’ complicated histories and who stole money from who else.

The most interesting of them is former NFL star Marshawn Lynch, once again an impressive screen presence, after he starred a couple of years ago in Bottoms. Another of them is Cam Giganet, who seems destined to someday play Pete Hegseth in a movie.

But layered on top of all that is a series of romantic subplots. Marvin gets reacquainted with Rose. Shakir’s character forms a relationship with Marvin’s assistant (Lio Tipton), and one of the henchmen is trying to get his wife to take him back. All of this stuff is tonally at odds with the crime plots, and not really in a way that’s ironically funny.

Other things are even stranger. The name “Marvin Gable” I guess is supposed to sound like “Marvin Gaye,” although we hear none of Gaye’s notoriously hard-to-clear music. There are some decent needle drops, although also omitted is the titular song by Nazareth.

Also, the film was set in Milwaukee, with tons of references to Milwaukee, even though it was shot in Manitoba

I like Ke Huy Quan a lot, and his winning the Oscar a couple of years ago for Everything Everywhere All At Once, after decades out of the game, was a fantastic story. Hopefully he’ll get to be in better movies than this.

Heart Eyes

Here’s another movie that awkwardly shoehorns romance into a completely different genre, this time slasher horror.

There’s a Heart Eyes killer, basically Ghostface from Scream, except that he has hearts for eyes. He’s out in Seattle killing couples who are in love. Is the killer someone who’s heartbroken? Or an incel? Or something even more batshit than that (hint: It’s the latter.)

Most of the film is spent on a pair of co-workers (Mason Gooding and Olivia Holt) fleeing the killer around Seattle (actually New Zealand). They aren’t a couple, even though they share obvious chemistry and attraction.

This film is fairly forgettable, but I admired certain things about it: The two leads, especially Holt, whose resemblance to a young Drew Barrymore (probably intentional, given the Scream connection) I couldn’t stop noticing. Michaela Watkins is hilarious, in a small turn as their boss. And I admired the ridiculous audacity of the killer reveal.

Parthenope

Paolo Sorrentino’s Parthenope presents a version of Italy in the 1960s and ‘70s in which everyone, and every thing, is extraordinarily beautiful. Gorgeous people, gorgeous vistas, gorgeous everything.

It’s a beautiful, magical place where everyone is hot, there are gorgeous views everywhere, and it’s possible to smoke a cigarette while swimming in a pool, submerge underwater and emerge from below with the cigarette still going.

And most gorgeous of all is Parthenope herself (newcomer Celeste Dalla Porta), a woman of such earthly beauty that she’s lusted after by just about everyone she meets, including people (her own brother, plus a corpulent Catholic Bishop) who certainly shouldn’t.

She’s the sort of woman who, when she sunbathes by a pool, attracts a rich guy trying to pick her up from his helicopter above. Just about the only male character who doesn’t shoot his shot is author John Cheever (played by Gary Oldman as a fall-down drunk); I’m enough of a Seinfeld fan to know why he doesn’t.

Parthenope considers becoming an actress — bringing her into contact with an insane acting teacher and an even more insane washed-up diva — but what she really wants is to become an anthropology professor.

It’s an enjoyable film, although not quite Sorrentino’s best. It feels like self-parody at times, and even more than that, it feels like the director had a bunch of extant ideas that didn’t fit together and stuck them all in one movie- including an extremely bizarre turn into magical realism near the end.