‘What’s Love Got To Do With It?’ Review: Multicultural Relationship Study Respects Muslim Traditions But Obeys Romcom Rules
variety.comGuy Lodge Film Critic Early on in “What’s Love Got to Do With It?,” enterprising London-based filmmaker Zoe (Lily James) pitches a proposed documentary about Muslim arranged marriages to a pair of white male commissioners.
They’re bored and disengaged until they realize how the topic can be dressed up in the tropes and lingo of Western romantic comedy to appeal to a general British audience: One suggests interview inserts in the style of “When Harry Met Sally,” the other name-drops “My Big Fat Greek Wedding” as a reference point.
When Zoe suggests titling the doc “Love Contractually,” the deal is done. Sharper than anything else in Shekhar Kapur’s pleasant, easygoing comedy, the scene neatly satirizes how nuanced cross-cultural material can be blandly packaged and whitewashed for the mainstream — a point that would land harder if “What’s Love Got to Do With It?” didn’t proceed to do much the same thing.
At a push, you could credit the film — a first feature screenwriting credit for producer and former journalist Jemima Khan — with some meta self-awareness as it tackles a thorny, divisive cultural institution in the sweetest, sunniest terms possible, down to its own recurring “When Harry Met Sally”-style inserts.
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