Sweethearts Review: Rom-Com College Daze

Sweethearts trots out the romantic comedy tropes playbook, but Kiernan Shipka and Nico Hiraga carry those tropes with aplomb.

Jamie (Kiernan Shipka, Longlegs) and Ben (Nico Hiraga, Booksmart) have been platonic best friends since 8th grade, and they happen to be freshmen at the same college. Jamie’s boyfriend is the dumb jock at college – the opening credits reveal that he’s got the lowest GPA to ever get accepted to Harvard – who cares more about sexting with her than deepening their relationship. Ben’s girlfriend is still in high school – don’t worry, she’s 18, because she was held back in first grade – but she never gives him a moment’s peace by calling and texting him non-stop.

The aforementioned fatal flaw within Sweethearts is that the film starts off with both Ben and Jamie miserable and tired of being held back by their relationships. If we start out with this as the baseline, we have no rooting interest or tension in whether they’ll stay together or not. Thankfully, screenwriters Dan Brier and Jordan Weiss (who also directs) pivot to make the film less about whether or not they’ll stay together, and more about a group of friends as they try to move on from the past. There’s also a third subplot around Palmer (Caleb Hearon, I Used to be Funny), their high school friend whose closeted status is their home town’s worst kept secret.

Jamie and Ben decide to finally break up with their spouses when they return home for Thanksgiving break, but have to devise the perfect (read: needlessly complicated) plan to do so. Shenanigans ensue, as you’d expect, and the inevitable is delayed until the end. Shipka and Hiraga nail their leading roles, even the comedic bits that don’t land as well as they should.

Where Sweethearts goes wrong is in how it leans away from the raunchy potential of a college-set comedy. There’s a mishap early on where Shipka tries to send a selfie but loses track of her clothes, and this is about as loose as the proceedings get. The most genuine aspect of the film comes from Palmer, as he tries to come to terms with coming out in a self-professed close-minded small town.* He teams up with the gay high school football coach, Coach Reese (Trammell Tillman, Severance), who shows him that he’s not as alone as he thinks.

I don’t hold this against the film too heavily, but the film is set in “suburban Ohio”, but I find it hard to believe the production went anywhere near Ohio. Everything takes place during Thanksgiving, and not a single person wears anything warmer than a hoodie. Yes, the planet is heating up, but come on now. Also, Ohio just passed a constitutional amendment to protect abortion access last year, so if the filmmakers were looking for a less tolerant place to set the film, they could have easily picked somewhere else.

If all you’re looking for is something you don’t need to devote your entire attention to on a weeknight, you could do a lot worse. And given that Sweethearts is Weiss’s feature directorial debut, I’m willing to give the film a pass, mostly thanks to Shipka and Hiraga’s comedic commitment. You’ve seen almost everything on display here, and that’s okay. The show must go on.

The Max Original film Sweethearts, from filmmaker Jordan Weiss, will debut on Max on Thursday, November 28, 2024.