‘The Other Zoey’ movie review: Josephine Langford lights up this knowing, modern love story 

From the meet-cute and heartbreak to the mistaken identity, the white lies and the grand gesture, this rom-com breezes through every genre convention on a wave of charm and goofiness

There is a thing called real estate porn. After salivating over the wonderful dens of the assorted media stars in The Morning Show, here is another bunch of exquisite living quarters to pamper your peepers. And when you realise that one of the homes is shared by college students, you would need to take a break to pick your jaw off the floor.

The Other Zoey is the kind of pasta-vanilla rom-com that is as sweet and comforting as fried, sugar-dusted bread. From the time Zoey (Josephine Langford) pitches her app to match compatible people instead of looking for romantic love, at a history class during a presentation on Valentine’s Day, we know she is headed for a jolly comeuppance.

Zoey is a high-achieving computer geek who has her future all mapped out, set to soar to the stratosphere on the back of degrees at MIT. She believes that romantic love is a commercial construct and relationships built on compatibility have a better chance of surviving. Her flatmate, Elle (Mallori Johnson) is the exact opposite of Zoey, enjoying watching rom-coms, weeping in sympathy as Julia Roberts tells Hugh Grant, she is “just a girl...”, writing poems and studying creative writing.

When Zoey hears Miles (Archie Renaux), who is a student at MIT, quote philosopher Alain de Botton about romantic love being a modern-day invention and that people would not fall in love if they had not heard of it, she feels she has found her perfect match. Complications arise when she causes soccer star Zach (Drew Starkey) to have a concussion and amnesia.

Zach mistakes Zoey for his girlfriend, who is also called Zoey (Maggie Thurmon), and the doctor, in the true tradition of Hindi film doctors from the ‘70s says, Zach should be kept calm, without any stress or his brain will be forever broken. Just as Zoey is getting ready to tell Zach’s charming parents Connie (Andie MacDowell) and Matt (Patrick Fabian), the truth, Miles walks into the lovely house and Zoey decides to hold her peace.  

The family, with Miles and Zach’s precocious little sister, Avery (Olive Abercrombie) are heading out for a ski weekend and invite Zoey along. With solid advice from Elle (“less books, more bathing suits”) Zoey joins the party. The truth will out and there is a falling out among best friends, but all comes right in the requisite grand gesture with a live stream replacing the boom box.

The leads are pleasant, their romance and sparring cheery, and it is so nice to see Heather Graham and Andie MacDowell be the best kind of movie mums. There are no cupcakes or cakes of any kind for that matter, but there is pizza that looks yummy, chess and much pop music; all coming together to pass an agreeable 90 minutes. Incidentally, science fiction and romance are not mutually exclusive, whatever Elle might say.