Five Blind Dates
Five Blind Dates
As the narrative suggests, Five Blind Dates is the first feature film made in Australia by Prime Video, which seeks to inject some Crazy Rich Asians flair into the hearts of the fans, this Valentine’s Day.
Lia, a character she alternatively co-writtes and plays, is a young Asian female resident in Sydney with struggling tea shop business and an insurmountable love drought.
Horrified by the prospect of being the only guest at her little sister’s wedding and being without a partner, she follows the directions of a healer and agrees to a few more strangers with her in the hopes that these will get her life headed into a brighter direction.
Even with an almost experimenting Australian cast who are primarily of Asian decent and a central role played by Hu, Five Blind Dates is cringingly funny and lacks in genuine romantic scenes. The romance it pictures is worn out and quite unbelievably so.
What really Wow-ed me about this foul and bruise-cousin, called Hu’s script which he co-wrote with Nathan Ramos-Park, as it contains some specific cultural detail which is very well thought through and logical.
Larry is a true urban girl, this is a smart woman who has been displaced from the son of a small town to the son of Sydney and started a Chinese teahouse with her grandmother’s legacy that assimilates all the customs of the dying grandmother, who taught and still teaches these traditions to Lia before she dies.
As a disappointing consequence, rather than the Taiwanese exotic food, her fellow Sydney residents only want Taiwanese bubble tea and ‘Bobo’s Tea Time’ is almost out of business.
Back in suburban Townsville to attend the engagement of her sister Alice (Tiffany Wong) Lia finds a gypsy fortune teller who tells her that she will marry her true love soon and also start working on the business after meeting five different men on blind dates before the wedding.
In a last resort, Lia gives in to the wishes of her older sister and estranged normal parents (Renee Lim and Tzi Ma) and undertakes a near fruitless search for a physically attractive eligible suitor hoping to get married.
The basic concept of Five Blind Dates is relatively straightforward and does hold some potential but fails again and again but this is due to the nothingness of sparky dialogues or amusing interactions between the underdone characters.
The film is dutifully bound to the boundaries of the genre with the inclusion of stereotypes such asbthe gay best friend (Ilai Swindells), the quiet wholesome hunk childhood friend (Yoson An) who provides useless but hot romantic potential for Lia other than ruining Lia’s chances of romance and performing without the spraying.
No one expects dramatic or groundbreaking changes in the idea of a romcom, as part of its attraction is provided by the predictable element, as long as there is enough of love and laughter. Nevertheless, No matter how hard Hu tries, Five Blind Dates is rather mild.
Therein, from February 13, Five Blind Dates will be accessible for streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
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- Genre: Comedy, Romance
- Country: United States
- Director: Shawn Seet
- Cast: Shuang Hu, Yoson An, Tiffany Wong, Ilai Swindells, Tzi Ma, Renee Lim, Rob Collins
