Tis’ the season full of jolly, freezing colds, hot cocoa, and cheesy rom-coms, and while there aren’t many new movies that are actually good and stand out of the crowd, there are a couple that still end up catching your attention. For me, that was the new, or almost new, movie: “The Other Zoey”.
“The Other Zoey,” as previously mentioned, is a romantic comedy that was released on Amazon Prime Video on November 10, 2023. This movie’s cast was pretty impressive to some extent with Josephine Langford playing the main character, and other notable cast members include Drew Starkey, Andie Mcdowell, Archie Renaux, and Heather Graham. “The Other Zoey” was directed by Sara Zandieh and written by Matt Tabak.
The movie centers around Zoey, a college program whiz, who believes that love is science and that compatibility is key in relationships. She soon meets Zach at the bookstore she works in. He ends up forgetting his credit card at the store and Zoey then plans to return the card only for him to end up getting into a mini accident, causing a concussion. Zach then mistakens Zoey for his girlfriend, who is also coincidentally named Zoey. Since Zach got a concussion, Zoey is then forced to lie and play along that she is his girlfriend in order to avoid making his condition worse. Soon enough, Zoey meets Zach’s cousin, who she really likes, which only adds to fuel to the fire of misunderstandings. The movie starts off as a love triangle and then goes a very different direction that no spectator could possibly presume.
The movie wasn’t bad. It’s hard to explain, but my reaction was merely good. It didn’t leave me with a “ That’s adorable” or “That was terrible” afterglow. I will say though, there’s a high chance this will be a seasonal rewatch movie for me, especially now that I’m aware of what actually happens, how everything turns out, and what parts are too cringy to even look at and wind forward through. The movie was adorable and just pleasant in general. It actually reminded me of a couple other movies. There were a couple references to the movie “Notting Hill,” and I ended up finding many similarities with this movie and “While you Were Sleeping,” also a rom-com of the 90s. It really seemed like “The Other Zoey’ took a lot of inspiration from it, with a sort of amnesiac love interest and the family of love interest accepting the main character even though technically the main character is just tied up in a big misunderstanding.
As previously mentioned, I enjoyed the movie. While it wasn’t technically festive or Christmas themed, it still appeared to be like a holiday movie and ended up being cozy enough to curl up with a blanket and a cup of hot cocoa. I’ll be honest- the movie seemed very stereotypical from the beginning, with the main character being all like “I hate romance” and “I don’t believe in love” and then she meets two completely different guys, and boom love triangle, leaving the audience thinking the tragedy of choosing between the two is the main plot of the movie. Well, not really. There was a huge plot twist in the middle of it that ended up changing the entire course of the story and creating a whole new different image of the movie. I think that’s actually what made me enjoy the movie, the concept that it tricks you into thinking it’s a cheesy, cliched love triangle movie and then it doesn’t really end up being that. Now I’m not saying it’s not cheesy, cliched and cringy. It has a bunch of movie references, behavior similar to other rom-com classics and includes a couple awkward-muddled scenes that felt a bit icky to watch. Overall though, the movie seemingly was supposed to turn out cute, sweet, and adorable and I think that intent was done successfully.
Overall, “The Other Zoey” received mixed reviews. “Rotten Tomatoes,” rated the movie 83% meanwhile IMDb, rated it 5.3 stars out of 10. The varied reviews are also possible due to the barely received recognition the movie had. This lack of recognition also resulted in an absence of many reviews about the movie from well known news sources. Variety Magazine ended up being the only magazines that reviewed the movie, calling it an “ innocuous comedy, hinging on a gimmicky plot contrivance, doesn’t transcend formula even when it’s winking at the clichés it caves to.” All in all, the movie ended up being great for fans of holiday rom-coms, and is definitely worth checking out if that applies to you.
