Finding Emily

It’s happened to us all. You meet someone on a night out and you just click right away. They’re wearing the perfect leather jacket and tell you your hair is cute. You listen to all the same bands and watch the same films. It’s fate. Only, you never hear from them again. You’re haunted by the idea of the missed connection, by the ‘what ifs?’. Alicia MacDonald’s Finding Emily is a charming and heartfelt romcom that explores what happens when the ‘what if?’ goes too far. 

Twenty-two-year-old Owen (Spike Fearn from Alien: Romulus) is a hopeless romantic who works as a sound engineer in the student union at Manchester City University. One night he meets the enigmatic Emily, dressed as a fairy, and sparks fly. But when goes to text her the next day, he’s got the wrong number. Owen then embarks on a maniacal, and often cringeworthy, quest to find his real-life manic pixie dream girl. On the way he gains the help of another Emily (The Nice Guys’ Angourie Rice), a determined psychology student writing her dissertation on romantic love. She’s looking for a case study to prove her thesis that love is an unnecessary ‘evolutionary hangover’ that can only lead to self-sabotage and madness. It’s a romcom match made in heaven.

It has all the things a good romcom should have

Fearn is painfully adorable as Owen. He’s got the face of Mick Jagger with a Liam Gallagher haircut (and monobrow), and has the energy of the sweet boy-next-door crossed with a swaggering front man. As well as being a proper heartthrob, he delivers a laugh-out-loud performance as the jittery and awkward leading man. Rice is just as formidable as the misguided Emily, who descends into madness herself as her web of lies, and flagrant psychological experiment, grow beyond her control. 

The eclectic cast of characters keep the outlandish plot feeling believable. Prasanna Puwanarajah delivers a wry performance as a cynical professor and Minnie Driver is the lacklustre dean who fobs off the enraged student union president (a punky Kat Ronney) when a disastrous mass email leaks the identity of every single Emily at the university. 

Finding Emily has all the things a good romcom should: deceit and miscommunication; a pair of plucky will-they won’t-they leads with fantastic chemistry; a grand gesture; a rousing speech; some cracking one-liners, and a great soundtrack. You can feel the likes of Notting Hill and When Harry Met Sally… in it, but there’s enough originality to keep things from feeling formulaic. Props to screenwriter Rachel Hirons too, who authentically captures Gen Z without feeling totally cringe. This entertaining caper will convince any hopeless romantic that there might just be hope for them yet.

In UK and Ireland cinemas May 22. In US theaters Aug 28.