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Unpleasant rom-com with undiagnosed mental disorder. |
| A romantic comedy that’s light on the comedy, and the romance for that matter too. My Favorite Girlfriend is a light drama about a man who falls for a girl with dissociative identity disorder – multiple personalities. Writer and director Amanda Raymond has a degree in clinical psychology, so it’s fair to assume that the presentation of her multiple personalities is reasonably accurate, but the film still leaves a bad taste. | Year Directed by: Amanda Raymond Screenplay by: Amanda Raymond Starring: Tyler Johnson, Bonnie Piesse | |
| Conrad (Tyler Johnson) is an aspiring chef. We know very little about him other than he works for a cranky boss at a bakery who threatens to fire him regularly but doesn’t. The film also tells us that he has OCD, but that’s the extent of his personality. Normally rom-coms will want to tell their audience why the main guy is single (recent break-up, fear of commitment, workaholic, etc,); here, it doesn’t seem to matter because he has no personality. He’s just a blank slate who’s about to fall in love. Conrad meets Molly (Bonnie Piesse) in a coffee shop and immediately falls for her confidence. She’s an influencer vlogger; a profession that doesn’t match her at all. She’s sweet and confident in herself, but she isn’t particularly outgoing or aggressive, and rarely talks about social media. Eventually we meet some of Molly’s other identities – Silk a singer, Sarah a lesbian, and Vanessa who’s just Molly with an accent. Most of the issues stem from the fact that Molly hasn’t been diagnosed yet. She’s gone through years in life with multiple personalities, and she knows she has gaps in her memory and clothes purchased under another identity that she can’t account for and yet does nothing about it. She has no family and a few a friends who have figured it out but just go along with it. Nobody has said anything to Molly and nobody has tried to introduce her to a psychotherapist. As Sarah, she had a long-term girlfriend who never bothered to get her any help. Get better friends, now. It takes a really bad joke where Conrad is trying to explain to her whether or not he’s cheating on her, for him to get help. And even then – Conrad, a stupid man with no personality – is going to hire a hypnotist to cure her. He’s very misguided. For Molly’s sake, luckily the film switches gears to Molly understanding and accepting her disorder and getting help. However, for a film that is supposed to be a romantic comedy, they just went about everything wrong. We have a protagonist with no personality, we have a love interest in desperate need of professional help but nobody has cared enough to help her, and that’s supposed to be funny? Romantic? Instead, I’ll suggest The Right One. Another romantic comedy about multiple disorders but a lot more fun and interesting. | ||
Available to stream on Hulu and Hoopla. Available to rent on Amazon, Microsoft, iTunes, etc.
Available to stream on Hoopla. Available to rent on iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, etc.
Available to rent on Microsoft Store.
Available to rent on iTunes.
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