The 90-minute rom-com “The Other Zoey” was recently made available for viewers to stream on Prime Video – an action I strongly advise against.
When the movie begins, we are introduced to Zoey Miller, a computer science major at Queens College with an intellectual superiority complex. She encompasses all I expect from a female lead at the beginning of such a movie: an analytical yet cynical personality and belief that compatibility of interests trumps the lie of romantic love. This depiction of smart women is so common at the beginning of rom-coms and has become extremely tedious.
The story begins when star soccer player Zach MacLaren gets amnesia and mistakes Miller for his girlfriend, who is also named Zoey, hence the movie title, “The Other Zoey.” The main Zoey uses the opportunity to get closer to his attractive cousin Miles, a computer geek who she thinks she’s compatible with.
By spending time with the family, Zoey predictably learns that the true love she shares with Zach is more valuable than her similar interests with Miles, as Miles turns out to be an unlikeable and uncaring person. This arc was done one too many times in other movies to be surprising or create any emotional response from viewers.
The facade falls apart when Zach gets mad at Zoey for lying to him. She gets frustrated and lashes out at her best friend, effectively alienating everybody she is close to. The film resolves when Zoey makes a grand gesture to win back her best friend and Zach, both of whom forgive her without hesitation. The lack of struggle Zoey goes through robs audience members of the satisfaction of a real resolution. I felt like I wasted my time.
As I sat through the movie, I drew too many similarities between the arc of this movie and every other rom-com where the main character builds a relationship on a lie. The model of this movie was so generic that I guessed the entire plot accurately within 15 minutes of starting it.
Throughout the movie, it was difficult to understand the details of main Zoey’s plan to join Zach on a trip to get close to Miles. They were never fully fleshed out and never made sense: seeing the plan play out becomes hard to watch. We are led to believe that Zoey is a young genius, so the only original plot point of the movie is completely flawed because the actions Zoey takes do not make any logical sense.
The entire movie is a mashup of different tropes and cliches that feel like an AI chatbot put them together, as each scene is aggressively boring and overdone. Zoey descends from every lead woman of every Hallmark Christmas movie, making her a flat character overall. This same “relationship built on a lie and becomes real” narrative has been played out many times before and was not changed or altered at all. The movie is built on Zoey learning that “opposites attract” and “everything happens for a reason” coupled with a host of other corny cliches.
Rom-coms, and Zoey’s hatred of them, were mentioned at some points in the movie. These were moments where I became desperate, hoping the writers were self-aware and were going to flip the script somehow. Unfortunately, that did not happen, and instead, the movie continued to “perpetuate unrealistic romantic paradigms” as Zoey elegantly puts it.
“The Other Zoey” is a generic and cliched romantic comedy that fails to provide any insight into romance or comedy. The film is a corny disaster that becomes difficult for audience members to watch. I would not recommend watching this dumpster fire.
