Fantasy Life Review: Underbaked Rom-Com

Fantasy Life shows serious promise with a Woody Allen-type premise and gorgeous cinematography, but the underbaked script lets it down.

Sam (Matthew Shear, of The Meyerowitz Stories) is a law school drop-out who struggles with his mental health, suffering from panic attacks and intrusive thoughts. When his therapist, Fred (Judd Hirsch, of The Fabelmans), offers him a job as a ‘manny’ for his grandchildren, Sam accepts. The marriage of the children’s parents, David (Alessandro Nivola, of The Brutalist) and Diane (Amanda Peet, of The Good Wife), is rocky, and when Sam joins them full-time while David is away, a simmering romance blooms between Sam and Diane.

The ensemble Shear manages to bring into this small film is brilliant; it feels like a showcase of what amazing work these actors could do if they were given these types of roles, and you can see how much they put into these characters. What a shame it is that the actual plot seems to be missing vital scenes that would have made Fantasy Life a much more satisfying watch. An inciting incident in the second act, where Sam has a panic attack whilst looking after the children, is treated like a throwaway moment whilst it is happening, but the rest of the film brings it up constantly.

The central romance feels like a letdown because we hardly get to spend any time with the two leads actually in love. It’s rare in this day and age for one to ask for a movie to be longer, but in this instance, I do not feel like 90 minutes was enough time to shape a romance like this in a satisfying way for the audience.

The standout performer in this is Peet; it is a role that comes across as very autobiographical from the outside, since Diane describes herself as an actor who previously had success but is struggling to make that change from a young actor getting offered countless roles to an older actor trying and failing to get a single audition. She brings bucketloads of emotion and gravitas to her character, and acts circles around all of her co-stars. Fantasy Life, which she also produced, should be a launch pad for the next stage of her career, because she is more than good enough to continue leading feature films once again.

Conor Murphy’s cinematography is very strong, with some gorgeous frames in the metropolis of New York, and lush colours when the plot moves to the country. Christopher Bear, composer of romance hits Past Lives and Roofman, gives a gorgeous score that pairs well with the subdued tone that Shear creates through his characters.

Fantasy Life has good intentions by choosing to focus on a character who lives his daily life with severe mental health issues and an actress who feels like her life is spiralling away from her – both of which are roles that we don’t see often on screen. However, a plot with more substance would have made this rom-com more memorable, and the lack of focus weighs it down greatly, making the storytelling come across as a little scattershot. That being said, Shear has shown he is more than capable of stepping into the directors chair, and we can look forward to seeing what he does next.

Fantasy Life will be released at the Angelika in New York on March 27, 2026 and in U.S. theatres nationwide on April 3, 2026.