What's Love Got to Do with It?

A well-meaning British romcom that explores East-West attitudes about love and marriage, but fails to light any true sparks between its star-crossed leads.

I like when movies, especially populist popcorn fare such as romantic comedies, acknowledge their roots — a polite way of saying, “Haven’t we already seen this movie before?”

You can clearly see DNA “What’s Love Got to Do With it?” shares with popular romcoms of modern ilk: “Love, Actually,” “Four Weddings and a Funeral,” “The Big Sick,” etc. It’s got a sprawling multicultural cast, best friends who need to wait until the last scene to figure out they’ve always been in love, meddling but loving parents, a montage of bad hookups, and so on.

But it’s also different in some ways and even unique. I liked that it’s a British movie with an APAC perspective — specifically, Pakistani Muslim immigrants — that has some interesting things to say about the difference between Eastern and Western approaches to love and marriage.

The gist: documentary filmmaker Zoe (Lily James) decides to make her next project about her childhood next-door neighbor and best friend Kazim (Shazad Latif), a successful oncologist who has decided to tie the knot through an arranged marriage guided by his parents. This seems hopelessly antiquated to Zoe, but as the process plays out and he moves closer toward getting hitched, she begins to reflect on her own disastrous love life and rethink her modern attitudes.

Of course, in the grand tradition of all romcoms, it takes the pair the entirety of the movie to figure out that they’re actually meant for each other. 'natch!

(In case you haven’t figured it out, this film has nothing to do with the 1993 Tina Turner biopic of the same name starring Angela Bassett.)

The original screenplay is the first produced by Jemima Khan, directed by veteran Shekhar Kapur (“Elizabeth” and its sequel). It’s the sort of movie where you like all the disparate ingredients very much, but the cinematic dish doesn’t quite come together.

Mostly I think this is due to the lack of any real sparks between James and Latif. They’re an extremely handsome couple, but the screenplay plays it a little too coy about their growing realization of their feelings for one another. It’s a lot of side glances and barely-there flirtations. By the time one or the other finally gets around to making the required protestations of love, the audience is less teased than annoyed it’s taken them this long.

The movie also loses a ton of energy in the last act. We have the usual “big argument” moment at around the 80-minute mark, and then the movie takes another 30 minutes winding up what should take about 15. It’s always better for a movie to start slow and gain momentum than begin flagging near the end.

Still, I loved the rich supporting cast, especially Shabana Azmi and Emma Thompson as the mothers of Kazim and Zoe, respectively. They’re very different women who forged a friendship based on mutual respect for their native cultures and passed that commitment to acceptance down to their children.

Sajal Aly plays Maymouna, the young woman from Pakistan who Kazim is eventually set to marry. She seems very timid and reluctant at first, but eventually shows a side much more assertive and wilder than we’d imagine. Oliver Chris charms as James, a veterinarian Zoe’s mom sets her up with, the sort of stammering, decent chap who used to be played by Hugh Grant.

Jeff Mirza does typical dad stuff as Kazim’s father, the sort of guy who thinks he’s the head of the family but his wife really runs the show. The elder couple actually met for the first time on their own wedding day. They consider themselves a modern Pakistani-Brit family, but they still hew to the most traditional values, such as insisting that Kazim marry a Muslim woman from a good family and the “right” ethnic tribes.

Asim Chaudhry has a hilarious bit part as “Mo the Matchmaker,” a for-hire guy who acts as a broker for Pakistani arranged marriages. He’s very enthusiastic about his job and has not a little “Better Call Saul” vibe to him.

There’s also a very heartfelt subplot — which is probably introduced too late in the movie — about Kazim’s estranged sister, Jamila, who was ostracized for marrying a white non-Muslim man. This ties in with Kazim’s very crusty grandmother (Pakiza Baig) who spends much of the movie scowling and muttering about the wicked ways of the West.

James is very much the central character, and I think the movie could’ve benefited from making her and Latif co-equals, each having separate scenes to show their journeys in seemingly separate directions. A few of their arguments together have some good bite, such as Kazim pointing out that while 55 percent of British marriages end in divorce, only 6 percent of arranged marriages do.

It should be pointed out that the version of arraigned marriage depicted in the movie is not quite the hardcore, old-school way. (“See this guy? You’re marrying him this afternoon!”) Kazim participates in what we’d call speed-dating sessions (emceed by Mo), Zoom calls and other face-to-face meetings and dates to get to know each other. They refer to it as “assisted marriage,” with the idea that you are “walking into love” rather than falling.

Doesn’t sound so bad, right? And compared to our Westernized approach to matchmaking, not without virtue. I mean, would you rather be set up by your mom or Tinder? With a lot of these apps, it’s like ordering a pair of pants online — except someone’s inside the pants.

The story-within-a-story technique of Zoe filming most of the encounters is an interesting one, allowing her to step back and observe rather than being in the middle of every scene. She has some funny interactions with her financial backers, a pair of slick producers who seem more attuned to reality dating shows than hefty documentary films.

As a piece of entertainment, “What's Love Got to Do with It?” has a lot of lovely qualities — worth a few dates but going your separate ways after that.

I do sort of wish this movie had taken on the title Zoe jokingingly suggests for her own: “Love, Contractually.” It’s a nod to the sameness romcoms tend to have for each other but also its plucky, left-handed approach to the material.